Mandarin Duck at Holmestrand, Vestfold on 7th-24th November 2023

Between 24th September and 24th November 2023 a male Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata was found associating with a flock of Mallard near Mulvika, Holmestrand in Vestfold. On the first observation date it was claimed that two individuals were present but this has not been confirmed on subsequent dates. At the beginning of this period the duck moved around a fare bit and was even found on the nearby Snekkestaddammen on one occasion. The species has become increasing frequent in Norway possibly due to increased escapes from feral populations further south in Europe and probably also the UK. We paid several visits to photograph this beautiful duck during 7th - 24th November when it had become rather stable at Hageman between Mulvika and Holmestrand. 

    

Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata male - Holmestrand, Vestfold, Norway 24/11-23

Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata male - Holmestrand, Vestfold, Norway 24/11-23

Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata male - Holmestrand, Vestfold, Norway 24/11-23

Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata male - Holmestrand, Vestfold, Norway 21/11-23

Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata male - Holmestrand, Vestfold, Norway 20/11-23

Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata male - Holmestrand, Vestfold, Norway 24/11-23

Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata male with Mallards - Holmestrand, Vestfold, Norway 7/11-23

Assam & Arunachal Pradesh, India 18th March-3rd April 2023

This birding trip was originally conceived in 2019 and scheduled for 2021 before the Corvid epidemic delayed all travel plans. Originally it was planned for five birding companions and a trip organizer-guide to do all the logistics for us in India. During 2022 when it became apparent it would be possible to travel in 2023, the itinerary was finalized, and the number of participants increased to eight for economic reasons. The itinerary was carefully planned together with our trip organizer-guide at Tiger Travel to include several important localities for some key species and sufficient days were allocated for visiting Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctury in Arunachal Pradesh for the recently described Bugan Liocichla. In addition, we visited Manas National Park, Nameri National Park, Sela Pass and Kaziranga National Park as well as several sites for rare species. All transport from Guwahati airport in Assam was by four vehicles including one 4x4 with a maximum of three participants in each vehicle plus driver. One vehicle was used primarily for baggage as everyone had a fair amount of photographic equipment. We were accompanied during the whole trip by one or two local birding guides, and driving within the national parks was by open safari jeeps often accompanied by extra local guides. Accommodation varied from several luxury hotels at the start and end of the trip but mostly economical lodges and hotels. However, accommodation at Eaglenest was very basic, first in a very basic house at Lama Camp then in tents at Bompu Camp with outdoor toilet facilities both camps being situated at a rather chilly ca. 2000 meters. Food dishes at all but the luxury hotels were vegetarian although a 'meat' dish was often available at some. Kingfisher beer was readily available at most accommodations although at Eaglenest we had to bring it with us. The weather we generally experienced at the higher altitudes was cool overcast and often rainy conditions. At lower altitudes it was warm and sunny but with some overcast and thunderstorms at Kaziranga. Because of the weather conditions throughout, bird photography was not always optimal and there was no priority or time for proper bird photography.

Our birding guides had good skills at finding birds, but identification was occasionally incorrect, and we therefore only counted species we personally saw or documented with photography. Likewise, we didn't accept their identification of birds calls without seeing the birds ourselves. These guides were not updated with all bird localities, and we missed some important species because of this. We met at least one European bird guide that seemed to have better knowledge of these bird sites and best times to visit them than the local guides we employed, which was unfortunate.

We recorded 407 species of birds but also several rare mammal species and all in all, a superb birding tour with many new species seen and photographed although the following is a very small selection of these.

Red Junglefowl Gallus gallus murghi male - Kaziranga NP, Assam 2nd April 2023

Snow Pigeon Columba leuconota leuconota - Sela pass, Arunachal Pradesh 23rd March 2023

Yellow-footed Green Pigeon Treron phoenicopterus phoenicopterus -
Between Guwahati and Manas NP, Assam 18th March 2023

Ibisbill Ibidorhyncha struthersii - Tenga River at Rupa, Arunachal Pradesh 25th March 2023

Long-billed Plover Charadrius placidus -Sangti Valley, Arunachal Pradesh 24th March 2023

Asian Openbill Anastomus oscitans - Kaziranga NP, Assam 2nd April 2023

Lesser Adjutant Leptoptilos javanicus - Kaziranga NP, Assam 2nd April 2023.

Greater Adjutant Leptoptilos dubius - Boragaon Landfill, Guwahati, Assam 18th March 2023

Oriental Darter Anhinga melanogaster - Kaziranga NP, Assam 31st March 2023

MORE IMAGES SOON

Great Grey Owl at Larvik, Vestfold on 6th March 2023

A Great Grey Owl Strix nebulosa had been repeatedly reported from an area near Larvik in Vestfold during February, but the exact locality was kept quiet by the group that first had visited and photographed the bird. It was probably thought that by releasing the exact locality, there would be a hoard of birders and photographers visiting and when difficult to find they would trample the area. Of course if this happened, it may disturb and even ruin the owls hunting success. Alternatively, it could just have been a case of plain selfishness by a few that wanted to have personal rights to the owl. Both alternatives have been widely discussed in the social media. Several of us visited the site on the 6th March as did several other eager birders and photographers hoping for the bird to turn up, which it eventually did. The owl flew in and landed on a favourite perch by our parked cars, fortunately where most visitors were standing. The owl is known to have been ringed as a youngster but an earlier attempt to catch the owl to control the ring number was unsuccessful. However, the owl is thought to be a second year bird. 

Northern Hawkowl at Barkåker, Vestfold 27th-28th February 2023

A Northern Hawkowl (haukugle) Surnia ulula was found near Barkåker in Vestfold, Norway on 26th February 2023. Next day I visited the site with a birding friend with the intention of catching and ringing the owl. We arrived early before most visitors had arrived and within 35 minuets had caught the owl in a mistnet. After a short processing the owl was ringed and released again to continue its search for food. The hawkowl was seen catching and feeding on a vole on at least two occasions, indicating the area was rich in food. On 28th February we visited the site again and the hawkowl was still hunting is the same area. The following images of the owl were taken during both visits.  

Northern Hawkowl (haukugle) Surnia ulula - Barkåker, Vestfold, Norway 27th February 2023

          

Northern Hawkowl (haukugle) Surnia ulula - Barkåker, Vestfold, Norway 27th February 2023
This image was taken as the hawkowl stooped towards our mistnet and was caught on the first attempt

Northern Hawkowl (haukugle) Surnia ulula - Barkåker, Vestfold, Norway 28th February 2023

Northern Hawkowl (haukugle) Surnia ulula - Barkåker, Vestfold, Norway 28th February 2023

Northern Hawkowl (haukugle) Surnia ulula - Barkåker, Vestfold, Norway 28th February 2023

White-throated Dipper at Falkensten, February 2023

We where lucky to find a White-throated Dipper (Fossekall) Cinclus cinclus cinclus feeding quite closely when we arrived at our favoured photography place and later two together were seen. However, the early morning light was not optimal and a higher than usual ISO was necessary to obtain any images at all which were mostly not sharp unfortunately. Fortunately however, the birds have become accustomed to bird photographers here and showed no interest for us during their food searching and allowed reasonably close photography. Here are several images from todays session but a return visit is planned for hopefully better results.

White-throated Dipper Cinclus cinclus - Falkensten, Horten, Vestfold 2nd February 2023

     

White-throated Dipper Cinclus cinclus - Falkensten, Horten, Vestfold 2nd February 2023

White-throated Dipper Cinclus cinclus - Falkensten, Horten, Vestfold 2nd February 2023

White-throated Dipper Cinclus cinclus - Falkensten, Horten, Vestfold 2nd February 2023

Canon EOS R5 full frame compared with x1.6 crop function - January 2023

Almost once a week a visit to the town centre at Holmestrand, Vestfold is made, not specifically to birdwatch but there is always an hour or so to kill, so it is used to count and register its wintering ducks and gulls in the small-boat harbour. There is rarely any variation in the species present but it often has good numbers of Common Goldeneye which may be observed at very close range due to their familiarity with the many people that use the waterfront walkway. Occasionally there are also good numbers of Mallard, Common Eider and the resident Herring Gulls. On occasions one or two Great Cormorants may sit on the jetty posts or hunt fish in the harbour, so all in all not the most exciting collection of species. On 19th January, the weather was a cold ca. -3 degrees centigrade, light breeze, and overcast with ca. 30cm snow/ice underfoot when it was decided to compare the difference between using the normal full frame modus with the built in x1.6 crop function on a Canon EOS R5 camera and RF 100-500mm lens. Using the x1.6 crop function with the lens at 500mm will give an equivalent of 800mm magnification and may be preferable to using an expensive x1.4 converter, which will reduce the smallest aperture by at least on f-stop and possibly negatively effect the focusing speed of the lens. A resting second year Great Cormorant was used as a suitable model although didn't really stay as long as I had hoped so therefore this test will be repeated later. Provisionally, the results shown here indicate that there is very little quality difference between the finished  JPEG cropped images that have been processed from the original CRAW-files using Adobe Lightroom and Topaz De Noise AI programs. The amount of heavy cropping applied to the full frame images are comparable to that applied to the x1.6 images, making the finished magnification about the same physical size for all finished images. The original CRAW file size for the full frame images were ca. 30 MB and for the x1.6 images ca. 11.5 MB. An image taken using the x1.6 function and full RAW would have a ca. 24 MB size, although this was not tried on this occasion. The resulting file sizes after processing of the full frame and the x1.6 images where roughly the same ca. 3.0-3.5 MB. Unfortunately there was a slight difference in ISO setting between the full frame and x1.6 originals, but this does not seem to have affected the results drastically.         

Great Cormorant (storskarv) Phalacrocorax carbo second year - Holmestrand 19th January 2023.
Cropped JPEG image from full frame (500mm), CRAW f/7.1, 1/640, 2000 ISO, original. 

Great Cormorant (storskarv) Phalacrocorax carbo second year - Holmestrand 19th January 2023.
Cropped JPEG image from x1.6 crop (800mm), CRAW f/7.1, 1/320, 1000 ISO, original. 

Great Cormorant (storskarv) Phalacrocorax carbo second year - Holmestrand 19th January 2023.
Cropped JPEG image from x1.6 crop (800mm), CRAW f/7.1, 1/320, 1000 ISO, original. 

Common Goldeneye (kvinand) Bucephala clangula second year - Holmestrand 3rd January 2023.

Common Goldeneye (kvinand) Bucephala clangula second year - Holmestrand 3rd January 2023.

American Pipit in Vestfold, Norway on 7th December 2022

 At around 09:00 on 7th December 2022 a birding friend and I were first to arrive at Pirane nature reserve, Hvasser south, Færder in Vestfold where an American Pipit Anthus rubescens rubescens had been found two days earlier. Hvasser south in Færder municipality is almost the furthest southeasten point of Norway and an ideal place to find migrating birds. It was a cold -5 C morning with a clear sky but with a wonderful orange sunrise promising a fine chilly day. After searching the beach path it was clear that almost no passerines were yet active and only a single male Blackbird was seen feeding in some berry bushes. At around 09:45 several more birders arrived and it was not long before the American Pipit was found at its apparently favoured seaweed feeding spot. At first it was difficult to observe as it kept mostly out of sight behind rocks and clumps of seaweed, but as the sunrise warmed the seaweed and presumably awakened the few insects present, the pipit became more active in searching for food and  occasionally even possible to photograph. A series of images were taken although not in the best lighting conditions by most of the visiting birders. At one point the pipit flew off and returned soon afterwards with a Rock Pipit which it fed eagerly alongside until that flew off again. We left the area at 10:30 as had most others, although more birders began arriving to see this popular bird. 

This American Pipit observation constitutes the 9th for Norway and the first for Vestfold county. Eight of these, including the first in 1997, have been of the nominate subspecies rubescens and just one of japonicus in 2008.

American Pipit Anthus rubescens rubescens - Hvasser, Vestfold, Norway 7/12-22

American Pipit Anthus rubescens rubescens - Hvasser, Vestfold, Norway 7/12-22

 

American Pipit Anthus rubescens rubescens - Hvasser, Vestfold, Norway 7/12-22

American Pipit Anthus rubescens rubescens - Hvasser, Vestfold, Norway 7/12-22

American Pipit Anthus rubescens rubescens - Hvasser, Vestfold, Norway 7/12-22

American Pipit Anthus rubescens rubescens - Hvasser, Vestfold, Norway 7/12-22