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In my previous post I wrote about my unsuccesful attempt to see a Pallid Swift on Friday whilst stood at Fornebu and the bird was at Nesoddtangen a mere 3.5km away over the fjord. I did not see the bird, but saw the birders who has seen it, and therefore did not need to consider the question as to whether I could add the bird to my Norwegian list which I was actually quite happy about. On Saturday morning though as I ate breakfast a message came through that the bird was back at the same spot where it had been seen the day before. Even though Nesoddtangen is only 12km from my kitchen table as the swift flies it is a 53km drive which with windy roads would take at least 55 minutes. Another option is to take the ferry from downtown Oslo which if you time everything perfectly would be a quicker option but can easily take even longer door to door if you have to wait for the ferry. As I had committed to take Jr Jr out driving I decided that a trip to Nesoddtangen was off the cards but how about a repeat of Friday’s attempt from Fornebu which is only a 10 minute drive away? It was worth a try. After a bit of searching which didn’t reveal the bird I suddenly picked out two birders who by the synchronised movements of their cameras were watching the bird flying low amongst some houses and every now again I could clearly see a dark small bird zooming past a white house! I had clearly seen the bird but could I really say I knew what I was watching and tick it? I decided to see if I could digitally document my observation and yes it is possible to document a one pixel wide dot at 3.5km range but the documentation does not help in convincing anyone that it is really a Pallid Swift or even a swift for that matter. It was nice to look at the pictures that were taken by the people I could see watching the dark dot and also some super pictures taken later in the day but they were documenting a level of detail that I had not seen. I hoped that I could avoid making a decision by taking the ferry over to Nesoddtangen on Sunday morning and joined a few other birders who were also late to the party but the bird had done a bunk (or perhaps perished overnight). So what to do? I had undoubtedly seen the bird but were the views “tickable”? The temptation to add the bird to my Norwegian and Akershus list was very high (I have seen the bird further south in Europe so it is not a lifer) but I have previously not been backward in expressing my views when others have “ticked” birds based on equally bad views and as I seem to be so concerned with ethics in birding then of course I knew (not so) deep down that I could not add the bird to my official lists no matter how much I wanted to and how easy it would have been to do so. I’ll have to find one of my own some time although as there have only been about 40 observations in Norway it ain’t an easy species to find. This still from the video below shows all of the necessary field characters to allow one to safely NOT add the species to your Norwegian list. The bird is so easy to see that the red ring I have added is hardly needed..... Note the two birders who seemed to be having great views and were much easier to see at 3.5km range Aker Brygge at 0809 on a chilly Sunday morning as I made my way to the Nesoddtangen ferry a new view for me as I look from Nesoddtangen towards Oslo. I have looked the opposite way countless times
Sex-dependent dispersal decisions in a cooperative desert bird The post To leave or to stay home? appeared first on British Ornithologists' Union.
Ringmærkningen: Juste enough, not to much, but never bored. If I had to sum up this morning, it would be like that. Given yesterday's events, I decided to open only 140 metres. The birds were nicely spread...
Morgenobs Da vi stod op i dag og kiggede ud kunne vi kun lige se foden af Blåvands stolte fyrtårn. sagtbarheden var derfor helt uovertruffent dårlig. Jeg (Sverre) tog dog alligevel mit bedste tøj...
Morgenobs Kommer snarest. Ringmærkning I morgenmørket stod tågen tyk omkring huset og omkring fyret - man kunne kun ane fyrets lyskegler der oplyste tågens dugdråber i luften med deres rytmiske...
Ringmærkningen: Juste enough, not to much, but never bored. If I had to sum up this morning, it would be like that. Given yesterday's events, I decided to open only 140 metres. The birds were nicely spread...
While Amira and Mara were opening the nets, I got the chance to sleep a bit longer today and join them for the first netround at sunrise. We were also joined by Henrik Møller Thomsen who came all the...
I 2024 besluttede Holstebro kommune at Græm Kær, som ligger i det nordvestlige hjørne af Husby sommerland skulle udstykkes til 60 sommerhus grunde. Lokale beboere...
9. nov. 2025 kl. 14:48
- nu med præmie Af Søren Gjaldbæk For et stykke tid siden opfordrede vi alle interesserede til at afsætte søndag den 16. november til en fælles fugledag....
BirdLife Norge har nok en gang sendt brev til Fiskeridirektoratet med krav om umiddelbar stans i sildefiske med not innenfor fjordlinjene i Nord-Norge. Bakgrunnen er den midlertidige åpningen for notfiske etter norsk vårgytende sild (NVG-sild) i Sørøysundet og Kvænangen, som vi mener er skadelig for sjøfugl og fjordøkosystemer.
Morning obs: We woke up to it being quite misty and damp, leaving us without much hope for the day. And the first couple of intervals were also very boring with just 5 or so species. However when Thomas...
9. nov. 2025 kl. 00:00
Ringmærkningen: The first two rounds this morning were very slow, with fewer than twenty birds in total, including a very distrubing Gransanger (Chiffchaff). The pattern on its head, chest and inner wing...
9. nov. 2025 kl. 00:00
Ringmærkningen: Coming soon! Trækket på Odden: Denne morgen på Odden var rolig og med langt mellem fuglene. Men vi valgte at se det som en fordel, da i dag var Mads? første oplevelse med...
This post will not make me any friends and possibly some enemies but after sleeping on it and now having, if not ice cold, then luke warm blood in my veins I still want to publish it (although have now toned it down through many iterations...). Yesterday was a day of high temperatures and not just the continued barmy weather. First, I got very wound up and my piss stated to boil by the blingers at Fornebu. On a number of my visits this autumn I have, upon getting out of the car, been greeted by the sounds of a Best of Eastern Vagrants mix tape being played by a net which is a whole 250m away. This goes on for at least three hours whilst the blinger(s) hope they will pull a rarity from the nets and completely disturbs all other life (both bird and human) in the nature reserve. Raising my displeasure about it hasn’t resulted in any change in actions and nor have any rarities been pulled from the nets (far more is recorded here by birders with bins than blingers with bling). Well, the tape (or in these days digital recording) was playing again yesterday and my heart dropped and blood started to boil at the thought of another ruined visit. I found an area though where I could stand which was a bit sheltered from the noise by the lay of the land and actually found some birds. All this time I was able to observe that the net was not being checked (way over half an hour) and when I did eventually spy the blingers they were engaged in an extended selfie photo shoot with a scarce bird they had caught and then proceeded to parade it around. Everything I was observing was against the rules governing ringing in Norway and is why for a lot of us ringing has such a bad reputation – for far too many blingers it is a hunt for rarities and good times hiding behind the excuse of being an important scientific activity (that is the only legal reason that people are allowed to trap birds and put them through the inherent stress and discomfort this causes them). Just so it is clear I am a big supporter of the serious Constant Effort Scheme ringing that is carried out at two Bird Observatories in Norway plus some other Observatories that take their work monitoring birds very seriously even if they do not have the resources to run CES schemes. I also fully support specific research with a conservation goal and cheer the use of modern technology that means a single tagged bird can answer more questions than 100 years and 10,000 birds worth of old fashioned ringing ever managed. But it's all the ad-hoc "let’s find a rarity" ringing that boils my piss. And further boiling occurs because many blingers don’t see the problem – birds are just objects to be (physically) exploited for their enjoyment. I think the problem is that the ringers get so caught up in the excitement of the catch (it triggers a basic human instinct) that they forget exactly what they are doing and why they are supposed to be doing it - it is the exact same instinct that drives photographers, twitchers and birders in general to chase birds and sometimes cross boundaries but the one important distinction is that only one of these requires a specific dispensation in law to be carried out. For anyone interested, here is a summary of the laws/rules/guidelines for ringing in Norway (all in Norwegian of course). There are very few explicit laws that govern ringing but two things that are stated very clearly are that trapped birds shall be ringed and released immediately and traps and nets should be continually watched (“Ved bruk av fangstredskap for å ringmerke fugl og merke flaggermus, skal fangede individer straks merkes og slippes fri. Fangstredskapet skal være under kontinuerlig tilsyn når det står til fangst.”) These rules are almost impossible for single ringer to follow so the body charged with organising ringing in Norway has in its handbook decided to define continuous as meaning at least every 30 minutes and with ringed birds has allowed for there to be a 5 minute photo shoot after the bird has been processed and ringed. Make of that what you will and also remember that if you ever witness ringing in action. How long is it really acceptable for a bird to hang in a net on damp morning right beside a loud speaker at full volume and in an area where cats prowl and humans walk with their dogs? I had a long email exchange with the two bodies responsible for ringing in Norway way back in 2014. This was as a result of a young Great Grey Owl being found with a broken leg due to a twig having got stuck between its leg and the ring and the bird would have died a long, painful death had it not been found (although I suspect that it exchanged that for being put down). I contacted the authorities-that-be to hear what the consequences of this would be as clearly the ring had either not been attached properly or perhaps a wrong ring size was used. The reply I got was literally “shit happens” and I also found out that there was no reporting on how many birds that died during the course of ringing but was assured it's not a problem even though they had zero data to back that up. There was a data field for this in the reporting software but it was not active. I expressed my shock at the cowboy like state of affairs but have since then kept my feelings on ringing mostly to myself as I feel there are few birders here who share my concerns. It was therefore very pleasing to see in the Ringers Handbook (in the link above) published in 2025 (but seemingly written in 2021 and promised in 2017…) that ringers now have to report dead birds in the now activated data field and it actually says that anyone who deliberately neglects to do so will see the removal of their ringing licence (en bevisst neglisjering av dette [dead birds] vil medføre at merkelisensen blir inndratt eller ikke fornyet) so it looks like when I thought I was banging my head against a wall that I may have actually brought about some change for the good. Maybe I will have to recharge my attempt to make Norwegian Ringing Ethical Again. The second annoyance of the day was that a Pallid Swift was found and I didn’t see it. As I arrived to look over the fjord from Fornebu a message came through that a Pallid Swift was at Nesoddtangen. I could see Nesoddtangen from where I was standing and through the scope could see the person who had sent the message at a range of 3.5km. But the persons (there were actually 3 of them) did not look like they were actually watching a swift. It transpired that the bird had been seen for half an hour and the finder had managed to inform local birders who managed to get there and see it but by the time the rest of us were informed that bird had disappeared not to be seen again. Just as well probably because I would then have had to decide whether the views would have been “tickable” or not. I did however have to answer that conundrum today after the bird was refound this morning but my decision will have to wait until my next blog post. Did I see any birds though? I had three Bearded Tits and three Chiffchaff in the reedbed at Storøykilen and one of the chiffies was a tristis with a ring on. While looking for the Pallid Swift I was informed that the long staying but not often seen King Eider was on the fjord off of Nesoddtangen and sure enough on a mirror flat sea I could make it out at a range of 3.5km and those views were just about tickable. In Maridalen all the Whooper Swans and the Pink-footed Geese have left and Jack saw a family of 4 Whoopers and a Pink-foot flying over Sørkedalen which were surely from the Dale. A single Pygmy Owl revealed it self to me in the same place as before and has presumably found a good hunting ground although I have yet to see it catch anything. female Bearded Tit (skjeggmeis) pair a ringed tristis Chiffchaff. In addition to looking right it also had the right call this unringed bird also looks like a tristis (in fact looks pretty much identical to the ringed bird above) but did not give the right call when I was watching it although that doesn't rule it out from being a tristis Pygmy Owl (spurveugle) - one of at least 3 birds that have been discovered in Maridalen this autumn where I was stood, where the Pallid Swift was seen and where the King Eider was swimming. Birding as it should be ;-)
Sidste år, den 23. november havde Ørneklubben en tur til Assistens Koirkegård i Svendborg, hvor der blev opsat fuglekasser - det kan man læse om her. Nu var...
8. nov. 2025 kl. 00:29
A new scientific paper published in the journal Marine Ornithology documents the power of community science across the west coast, and provides essential information on a population of Brown...
Every spring, Common Loons flock to Montana’s lakes to nest after wintering along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. For the past three decades, Tony Gangemi has followed them, surveying the lakes...
This morning, Florian, János, and I headed to World?s End 3 for the migration count with Knud. János left a bit earlier to bird along the way and noted many Eurasian Blackbirds (Solsort) along the...
Morgenobs Vejret er gråt og overskyet, tågen buldrer ind fra både havet og mosen og vinden blæser med sølle 3 sekundmeter fra næsten stik øst. Heldigvis er der stadig relativt lunt for en novemberdag...
8. nov. 2025 kl. 00:00
Ringmærkningen/the ringing: Today's weather was very different to yesterday's: a grey sky and a colder temperature, autumn is here. When Anna and I opened the nets, we found that there were still lots...
Ringmærkningen/the ringing: xxxxx Trækket på Odden: Vejret spiller stærkt ind, selv om vi måske stadig ikke helt forstår, hvordan. En overskyet morgen og formiddag næsten uden vind, men med kort...
7. nov. 2025 kl. 21:19
In a world grappling with biodiversity loss and climate change, the need for practical tools to measure nature’s health has never been more urgent. That’s where birds come in—and why...
This mural is in progress! Check back soon for more. As part of the Audubon Mural Project—a public-art initiative drawing attention to birds that are vulnerable to extinction from climate...
I went once again out for observing at World?s End III. The first hour already brought us a Black-throated Diver (Sortstrubet Lom), which we hadn't seen so often in the last weeks. It was also a good...
