We are now entering that exciting period of the autumn when I should be telling you about my upcoming trip to a wind blown island in search of eastern magic. This year though does not look to be shaping up in the right way such that I have not definite plans in place yet although may travel spur of the moment if the weather looks promising and others have the same thought. Hopefully though this will be the year for multiple eastern magic in Oslo and maybe increased searching will result in more being found? I have my ears tuned in for the call of Yellow-browed Warbler already and as the autu ..read more

On Saturday a pair of Lesser White-fronted Geese were found at Nordre Øyeren. I am a man who loves a wild goose chase and LWfG is an even more special species than Taiga Bean Goose with it being the rarest species in Europe (excluding Russia) and the last wild birds follow very well established migration routes from their breeding sites in the far north of Norway to wintering sites in Greece. I should therefore have been out of the door in a heartbeat, but the key word is wild and unfortunately these were never going to be from the proper wild geese (population ca.100 in Europe). Eve ..read more

This week has felt quite uneventful, but I have actually added yet another species to #Oslo2024 so am now just one precious species away from the mythical 200 and Maridalen has also bagged itself a new species which I twitched this morning. The birding related highlight of the week was a very pleasant meeting with Five Bean Geese Gentlemen from Scotland who were on a trip to Sweden and Norway to see their geese on the staging grounds. It was my second time meeting Angus and Brian and first time meeting Carl, Billy and Rick. The same geese I had seen the previous week were all present and corre ..read more

The title of this post was supposed to be a metaphor for searching for autumn waders in Oslo but thinking about it scrapping for crumbs would actually be more exciting. Yesterday, Jack and I took the ferry and visited the islands. The wind was from the NNE, it was raining and the tide so low that the bay at Gressholmen was just exposed mud. Hordes of waders were as good as guaranteed…. Well of course that was not the case. Two voyeuristic passes of Fru. Galteskjær gave a single Common Sand on the second pass. Fru. Gressholmen’s muddy delights had NO waders but Lindøya gave us a Ringed Plover ..read more

The weather has continued to be conducive to raptor watching in Maridalen and I hoped to be able to pin down, at least roughly, where the Honey Buzzard has a nest but despite seeing and hearing him I have come no closer. However, I have found photos of the same bird showing quite how large a range he covers in his search for food. He must even at times fly very close to the nest I follow showing how different pairs share the same feeding territories. Given how widely he travels though then I find it strange that I have not knowingly seen “my” male anywhere but at/over the nest. By looking at ..read more

This spring there were still 2 of the “Scottish” Taiga Bean Geese with functioning GPS collars one of which uses the Norwegian migration route and the other the Swedish route. During the summer a lack of plots led me to think the collars had stopped working but 05, the Norwegian bird, has come online again so the birds were maybe just in wilderness areas without mobile coverage. 05 who is a female and paired with a tagged bird V8 (they both were tagged on 5 Nov 2022) left her moulting grounds, close to the breeding areas in Sweden, before dawn on 24 August and arrived at a favoured field 4 an ..read more

Here are photos of the more photogenic but sadly less rare raptors from yesterday with a couple of pics from today. The Honey Buzzard sighting was very interesting. I wrote that he was not near his nest (not that I knew where the nest was) when he was calling but that looks not to be true. Upon looking at my photos I see that when he flew over me he was carry a disc of wasp cake but when he returned only 7 minutes later (which is when he started calling) he was empty taloned. This surely means that he delivered the food to young (in a nest) only 3 minutes flight away and he was not flying fast ..read more

After many days of wind and/or rain the more settled and sunny weather today looked like it could be good for  birds of prey (bops). I checked out my breeding birds first. The two Honey Buzzard chicks are now a month old and growing quickly but still have at least two more weeks until fledging. To highlight how late this nest is, a migrating juvenile was seen at Huk today, see picturehere. The young Hobbies have been out of the nest a good while but are not yet independent. They are good fliers and I have seen them catching dragonflies but they still spend there time waiting in tree tops ..read more

My dream of seeing 200 species in #Oslo2024 has taken a major step towards being reality over the last four days and I am now just three species away with four months to go. Starting on Friday afternoon we have had strong southerly winds with gusts of up to 25m/s and this is what you hope for if you want to add seabirds to your Oslo list. A message on Friday evening of a Fulmar was just the excuse I needed to take the scenic route back from dropping Jr Jr off at a friend. I had an hour at Huk before it got dark and although I did not see the Fulmar I did experience some impressive waves and tw ..read more

This week I have twice boarded the ferry to visit my two ladies of the Isles and both times it is Fru. Galteskjær that has delivered but the wares she puts on show are very meager. On Tuesday it was a single Oystercatcher... and on Wednesday a Redshank, 2 Ringed Plover and a Common Sandpiper. In desperation today I abandoned Oslo and went to Årnestangen in the rain. There was more to see but it was hardly a succesful visit and there was such a turn around of birds that virtually every wader I saw either came or went in the time I was there. Checklist is here.   the view at Årnesta ..read more