Friday 13 May 2011

Getting better...

I allowed myself to sleep until 5am and woke feeling suprisingly churpy. Off to what is becoming my new "local" patch of Brentetangen. Arrived at 0625 and the first bird I saw was a Fulmar which fooled me into thinking this would be a day of intense passage. The winds were again from the SW and stronger than yesterday so it should have been good. A local soon joined me and he too expected good things. I stayed until 10am and had some good birds but they were few and far between and there was nothing else moving to keep the interest up. It does appear though that this is how it is here. Undoubted highlight was an light phase Pomarine Skua which went through at some hight at 0918 and had me thinking back to seawatching off Seaford in Sussex in the early 90's. Also single Puffin, Black Guillemot and 2 Gannets were quality birds.
A check of the national bird sightings on my phone showed there was a singing Serin back in Oslo. This was at the same location that a pair bred at last summer although for some reason I never made the 15 minute journey to see them last year. This time I felt it would be worth the "effort" and set off back to Oslo. The location was a large graveyard and after walking around for 10 minutes I heard the bird and soon saw it. A fine, very yellow male Serin singing his heart out. I was able to get very good views and good photos and video and then show Per Christian the bird who had also arrived. After getting our fill we then headed for the car park only to hear a Serin singing 200 metres from the bird we had just left. Given that this is a national rarity and that birds do fly it would be natural to expect this to be the same bird but no it was a new bird. This one was a lot less yellow and had distinct barring on the breast. So 2 males present. Could they be the male from last year and one of the young?
Here are picture of the 2 different birds plus a video of the more colourful bird
Serin 1 - the colourful male
Serin 2 - the less colourful (young?) male



Singing Serin

No comments:

Post a Comment