Monday, July 09, 2018

Øygarden 01-07 July 2018 - Ups, downs and autumn migration

The trend of not birding continues almost unabated. I have not yet given up properly.

I managed to take a 10 minute detour to the shops on 03.07, half an hour in the nature reserve at Tjeldstø on 04.07 and spent a whopping two hours seawatching at Skogsøy on 07.07.

One seriously bad piece of news was that yet another of the good overwintering sites for species like Water Rail vannrikse, Jack Snipe kvartbekkasin and similar has been destroyed - the second such site in as many years. This insidious destruction of small "unimportant" sites probably plays a massive role in the decline of many such species. Once gone these site will never ever save the lives of struggling birds in the depth of winter. I am considering start laying land mines in such areas, this is at least an acceptable activity in large parts of the world....

Quite a bit of age variation among the Common Tern makrellterne chicks....




Common Terns makrellterne feeding young


On the up side the terns - at least Common Terns makrellterne are doing well with breeding pairs at a number of locations. Other species that have managed to get young on the way include Lapwings vipe, Oystercatcher tjeld and quite a lot of Common Gull fiskemåke. Wheatear steinskvett, Meadow Pipits heipiplerke and many other species have fledged young now.

Curlew storspove


Meadow Pipit heipiplerke


Young Wheatear steinskvett

Seawatching at Skogsøy produced the usual summer suspects - Great Skua storjo, Gannet havsule and Common Scoter svartand in addition to some autumn migration - a flock of Whimbrel småspove.


As usual there is more age variation among the Gannets havsule during the summer

The most (and arguably best) picture here - a Great Skua storjo. Massively cropped.

Migrating Whimbrel småspove at Skogsøy


Greenshank gluttsnipe outside my house in the first two days of the month were another sign of autumn.



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