Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Herdlevær and Tjeldstø 14 April 2015 - Merlins / Getting everything wrong

Started with southerly winds and rain but the sun got out later.

Merlin dvergfalk at Tjeldstø


A couple of hours out and about today proved relatively productive. Normally Merlins dvergfalk are not everyday fare in Øygarden but today I had one at Breivik, another at Tjeldstø and yet another at back home at Nautnes. The one at Tjeldstø I originally mistook for a Kestrel - thankfully I photographed this one - albeit at long range.

Male Goshawk hønsehauk at Tjeldstø


Another (probable) mistake was what I thought to be a Sparrowhawk spurvehauk - having seen one fly over and stoop on some passerines only 10 minutes earlier. I took a few photographs of what I thought was the same bird - but looking at the shape of the wing and general proportions I think this must actually be a male Goshawk hønsehauk.



These images of a female White Wagtail linerle are not cropped!


Yet another mistake was what I assumed to be a female Pied Wagtail svartryggerle at Sture but was in fact a White Wagtail linerle. The seemingly dark and blotchy upperparts had me fooled but the rump was not black so this will have to go down as White....it gave superb photo opportunities which I also managed to mess up - overexposing such that the white on the face loses all definition. Partly incompetence and partly because the camera was set to overexpose in flight on raptors from below.

Male White Wagtail linerle at Herdlevær - this was involved in a dispute with a male Pied Wagtail svartyggerle which was nothing like as obliging....


Herdlevær produced a Snipe enkeltbekkasin, a couple of Jackdaw kaie, a male Pied Wagtail svartryggerle, a few White wags linerle and not a lot else.

Two more male Pied wags svartryggerle at Breivik where I also heard Dunnock jernspurv singing for the first time this year.

An all dark corvid at Skogsøy got away due to traffic.

Hopefully I'll get things right tomorrow.....




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