Like most men I am quite easy to please: let me ogle a good
looking bird early in the morning and I’ll be happy for the rest of day. Are
you reading this Mrs. OsloBirder? ;-)
My good looking bird was of course Mrs OsloBirder but soon
afterwards I was also fortunate enough to spy a Ring Ouzel in Maridalen. With
this in the box my spring is now complete and I can find other things to do
than birding!
Schools were closed today in Oslo because of the fact that
2016 is a Leap Year and the extra day needs to be lost. Yes you read that right
– in Norway they are scared of giving kids too much education. I have never
before encountered such nonsense!!!!!!!!!!
Surprisingly my oldest daughter was happy to join me in Maridalen
where we were both armed with a camera. There was not an awful lot for us to
photograph but Long-tailed Tits put us both through our paces and we had frogs
and brick licking Crossbills. It was a good opportunity to compare the results
of my new camera versus my old one with the 70-300mm lens mounted.
Whilst we were out the first Maridalen Osprey of the year
flew over. Just 10 seconds earlier I had commented that we could expect one as
the ice on the lake had disappeared during the course of the night and then
bingo! After this I kept talking about Golden Eagles but couldn’t repeat my
luck.
I was very happy with how some of my pictures came out today
and in good (but not sun) light I had some pictures of brick licking Common Crossbills
which I think are just fab! The only issue I am having now is with autofocus
especially when birds are close or if there are some branches in the way
although I think there is a manual focus alternative which I need to
investigate.
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| A good looking bird. Male Ring Ouzel (ringtrost) |
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| first Osprey (fiskeørn) of the year in Maridalen |
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| quite happy with this shot - a brick licking male Common Crossbill (grankorsnebb) |
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| also happy with this. The shutter speed was set to 1/500 sec but the good light would have allowed me to have a much faster speed which would have captured the wings perfectly |
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| female - note the tongue |
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| Maridalsvannet yesterday evening. The ice is already breaking up |
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| and by this morning was all gone (the wind having sped things up) |
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| White Wagtail (linerle) |
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| we had good views and photo opportunities with a pair of Long-tailed Tits (stjertmeis). This bird has a lot of black in the head which suggests it is an integrade with the European subspecies europaeus |
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| wheras the other bird was a normal white-headed caudatus although note that in the top right picture when the feathers are raised that it looks like they are darker further down |
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| a young male Common Crossbill |
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| Long-tailed Tit in action |
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| Long-tailed Tit posing |
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| and more action |
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| White Wagtail in habitat |
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