The wild side

Today's sea gazing at Krokstrand gave next to nothing despite reasonable southerly winds. Two Gannet (havsule) and a Kittiwake (krykkje) and that's it!

 

I spent yesterday with wildlife cameraman James Ewen who is filming a documentary on the wild side of Oslo. Our aim was to find out how to film the Peregrine (vandrefalk) that winters in Oslo and we had a successful day. We found the bird, an adult, sunning itself on top of Oslo’s tallest building, the Radisson Plaza, and were able to see where it will be best to film in the coming weeks.

We also walked around Oslo looking for other good subjects.

The Peregrine (vandrefalk) can be seen to the right of the picture with it enlarged in the inset

The river by the hotel at Vaterland had a good selection of urban wildlife, rats, feral pigeons, Herring Gulls and drug addicts and pushers – it will make a good subject for the documentary if the cameraman is able to work safely.

At the grain silos the Long-tailed Duck (havelle) was still present and today was the only duck there!

1st winter male Long-tailed Duck (havelle). it will be interesting it it stays through the winter to watch it coming into adult (and much smarter) plumage

Cycling home I stopped at every stand of Larch trees in the parks as this is the favourite food source for Two-barred Crossbills (båndkorsnebb). I had no luck until I got to St.Hanhaugen where I finally heard calling Crossbills. It took a long time to locate the birds but they, disappointingly, turned out to be Common Crossbills (grankorsnebb). One bird which had been calling flew off leaving a feeding male which was totally quiet in the 10 minutes I watched. It is very easy to miss feeding Crossbills, just like the Pine Grosbeaks (konglebit) of last winter they feed very unobtrusively and only call just before they fly off to the next tree.