Oslobirder

School, and university, summer holidays have begun and we are once again privileged to be allowed to use the wonderful cabin at Hulvik. A week of sun, the odd butterfly and maybe some Nightjars awaits plus late nights watching football - Norway vs Senegal at 2am tonight anyone?

Some pleasant surprises in Oslo and Maridalen regarding breeding birds means I am not completely over into the butterfly world just yet.

On the lake there was suddenly a single adult Mute Swan with 5 small young! This is just like last year in that they suddenly appeared but this year I was better prepared and had discovered the nest on 26 May. After that discovery of...

Last autumn I wrote a post summarising a great year of buttering and I also listed the remaining Norwegian species I had yet to see and how I could go about that.

 Yesterday was time to start chipping away at that list and a trip to Hed...

Only ten years ago it looked like Blyth’s Reed Warbler was going to establish itself as a regular, if rare, breeding bird in south east Norway. It bred in Maridalen in 2015 and in my experience a surprisingly high number of the singing males that turned up other places around Oslo ended up finding a mate and breeding.

But then the upward curve peaked and a decl...

On Thursday I guided to Great Grey Owls for what will probably be the last time this season. The chosen bird was Miss Hissig, the unusually vocal female who has always made her presence known by bill snapping whilst we are more than 50m away. On Thursday she had also added a rather menacing growling to her repertoire and this may have been due to the presence of a fairly larg...