Friday, March 13, 2020

Herdlevær 11 March 2020 - Status check

With strong SW winds and heavy showers whilst I prepared for the day I opted not to go to Skogsøy which had been my original plan and instead checked a few places to get an idea about what was going on. This turned out to be a mistake as the weather was fine, if rather windy, for a few hours and there was obviously a lot passing over the sea.

A half hour breakfast break at Herdlevær produced 66 Kittiwake krykkje, 34 Gannet havsule and a Curlew storspove heading north. Small numbers of auks and most of the usual suspects also turned up - including several White-tailed Eagles havørn.





Bathing Peregrine vandrefalk

Elsewhere some larger Starling stær flocks indicated new arrivals with 30-40 at a few locations. A few Skylark sanglerke, a bathing Peregrine vandrefalk and Snipe enkeltbekkasin.were among the other sightings.

A potentially bigger miss than not going to Skogsøy was a sighting of two distant birds in silhouette which were almost definitely Stonechats svartstrupe. However, despite only looking away long enough to get my camera out before I walked closer to where the birds were I could not relocate them.

UK3 with friends

One of at least 60 Greylags grågås at Tjeldstø had a neck ring - UK3 - a bird I have not seen before. According to geese.org this bird was ringed a little further south in Norway (Kårstø) on 23 June 2019 and was then reported for a few days in northern Germany 21-23 September 2019 before turning up at Tjeldstø today.

No comments: