Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Tjeldstø 10 March 2015 - Short but sweet

Gale force onshore winds with occasional short showers.

Rook kornkråke at Harkestad

No time to be out and about once again so it was the trip to the shops that saved the day - a Rook kornkråke was the bird of the day at Harkestad where there was also a flock of around 60 Starling stær. The Rook was the first I've seen in Øygarden this year and although this species is pretty much annual here and the majority of records are spring sightings this bird was rather early.

A brief walk at Tjeldstø produced a Gannet havsule over Hjeltefjord and a further increase in Greylag grågås numbers - now at least 45 present.

View at Solberg today

A quick stop at Solberg produced nothing much out of the ordinary but 50 Eider ærfugl had been forced into this (relatively!) sheltered bay, there was a flock of approximately 40 Long-tailed Duck havelle and 12 Fieldfare gråtrost here too.

A ridiculous crop of 440 pixels from DSLR + 400mm telephoto lens

440 pixels from the centre of a shot taken with a compact superzoom.
Although the contrast may not be as good as the DSLR the image is pretty impressive.
With my DSLR probably on its last legs this may soon be my main camera - and it certainly does the job regarding stuff that is not moving too quickly....

This image is itself heavily cropped from a landscape image taken with the compact superzoom. I cropped it because otherwise the circle around the bird would have been meaningless - these were very distant shots indeed!

I stopped at the most regular and accessible breeding site for Ringed Plover sandlo on the way home and found one bird present - another first for the year. 

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