Dusky Thrush!

Whoa, let's try to start this blogging thing again...

Last Saturday I was out birding by the coast with mom and a friend (not seeing any birds, it was so foggy! We could hear singing Long-tailed Ducks through the mist though...) when I checked the phone and saw that a Dusky Thrush had been seen in Uppland...
Since I've seen alerts for this bird before and they've turned out to be mis-identified Fieldfares I decided to wait for another alert to confirm the report.
And it came. So... here we were, pretty far away (now in the middle of the forest a little bit from the coast) trying to figure out whether we would have the time to get to the thrush before dusk. It didn't look very good, but mom and I decided that what the heck? and drove off. Let our friend off in Uppsala since she's not really the twitching type and hit the roads while trying to figure out exactly where the thrush had been seen. Good thing was that it was very close to a place where we had been birding before (best place for Mistle Thrush in winter) so we found it pretty easily. But now it was about 3.40pm and the sun was starting to set. So... of course... no bird. I did see a thrush in the tree, but it was way too dark to see any details. Could have been anything.

Next morning it was up early to get to the place at daybreak!
Got there just as it was getting light, and as we got out of the car we got an alarm: the bird had been seen. Great! Got to the place and whoa! So many people, much more than yesterday! There were people there who had driven all night from Skåne and Sundsvall...
Found a not-so-great spot and started searching the trees. The bird had mostly kept to a few tall cypress-like trees from where it occasionally jumped out to some kind of crabapple tree to eat.
Well, to cut a long story short I did finally see the bird, but it did take until 10:30am, a bit of running around since the bird had relocated (and then giving up on the running around since it was so confusing and instead getting back to the first place, grabbing a really good spot) and lots of waiting before the bird finally showed. It was really skulking, only showing for brief moments so you had to be fast. Despite the big crowd everyone seemed to behave very well, there was no pushing or shoving to see the bird. After seeing it four times, the last time well in my scope I decided to leave my spot for others who might not have seen it yet.

A nice twitch in rather cold and dreary weather, but who cares when you get to see a great bird and talk to loads of people you don't meet that often? (I sometimes think that one of the best thing about twitches is that it gathers all birders in one location... otherwise you usually just meet one at a time!)

Didn't have a chance to get a photo of the bird, so here's a link to photos taken by others.

Last year, part 2

Last post left off at late April, so on we go to May, this month where we try to combine exams with rarity influx! May is probably my favourite month when it comes to birding, a very exciting time. And this year was no exception!

It all started on the 11th, with a right corker indeed. A Sociable Lapwing was found just putside Uppsala! Had to chosse between it and a maths lecture, what an easy choice! The bird was somewhat distant, but unmistakable. The fact that the weather was great, the setting next to a beautiful castle and all the birders there happy and friendly made this a wonderful twitch. Didn't get any photos that were any good, but took this small film. Hey, at the end you can see what it is! ;-)


Adult Sociable Lapwing (Vanellus gregarius), Salsta, 11 May 2010

My mom was away when the bird was discovered, and two days later when she got home we went for the bird again. Sadly, by then it was gone, but instead we drove to Vendelsjön where we got the information that a Marsh Sandpiper had not only been seen, but seen displaying on the other side of the lake! To cut a long story short, got there, saw (and heard!) the bird, and got some MORE information about a Great White Egret at Årike Fyris, what could be called my local patch. This bird was obliging indeed, staying for a few days and being so obvious one did not need any binos to pick it out.


Great White Egret (Ardea alba), Årike Fyris, 13 May 2010

May kept on giving, as news broke only a few days later of a Short-toed Lark at Ledskär. Nice little bird, albeit a little distant with heat haze making it difficult to see well at times.

The month ended with a young Pallid Harrier at Lövstaslätten, and a Golden Oriole heard singing (could not see it despite trying hard) at Tämnaren. Not bad since I never even left the province of Uppland!


Pallid Harrier (Circus macrourus), 2cy male, Lövstaslätten 29 May 2010

In early June I went to Öland, a nice trip even though we only saw the usual suspects.

On the 4th of July I found my first ever Red Kite for Uppland, really nice since it's pretty rare up here with only a few seen every year. Sadly I only saw it briefly from the car, and mom who was driving didn't see it at all.

July also brought a Yellow-legged Gull to Stockholm, a first for Uppland. People up here are starting to look through the gulls in Stockholm more and more, and with the help of the gull experts in southern Sweden now both Caspian and Yellow-legged have been added to birds found in Stockholm. Anyway, on the last day of July I got there to see the bird. Was a bit hard at first despite me reading up on how to ID it, but since me and mom where the only people there we were a bit unsure at first that the gull we had picked out was the right one. Luckily more people arrived and the ID was confirmed. It's a bit odd twitching in the middle of Stockholm, with tourists walking by wondering what the hell we're doing! Also feels a bit odd to throw out bread to get a rarity within meters of us...


Yellow-legged Gull (Larus michahellis), 1cy, Skeppsbron, Stockholm, 31 July 2010

After that everything seemed to die down, and we got an autumn without any real rarities. Well, not in Uppland at least, die-hard twitchers went to Holmögadd for the White-winged Lark and to Ottenby for a very confiding Black-throated Accentor... too far for me, I stayed at home.

A Buff-breasted Sandpiper was nice to see in Ledskär, and a Little Bunting during a field trip to Björn, other than that the months were mostly spend watching geese in Hjälstaviken or walking in the forests. The last year tick I got was a Short-eared Owl at Kungsängen, very good views as it sat on a pole next to the road, lit by our car lights...

And that was it for 2010. Let's hope 2011 will be as exciting!

Last year, part 1

The weather here is ghastly (first cold, then warm, then cold again!) and the roads outside town were pure ice today. Not kidding at all, they were the worst mom had ever seen and she said it was a good thing I was driving as I have taken the ice test for my license... it was not fun though, especially since our car does not have studded tires. I think this is the first time that I've really wished for those! Didn't even see any birds, and that's not kidding either. One of those days when the forest is completely silent, absolutely nothing could be heard or seen.

So, let's take a look at last year's best birds instead!

Year started with a bang, as a Black-throated Thrush was found on the last day of 2009. Went there on January 1 2010, and saw the bird. It was either a young male or an old female, I'm not sure if the experts ever came to a conclusion on that. Feeding at a marvelous feeding station in a garden with a most friendly lady who let us all into the garden to see the bird.


Black-throated Thrush (Turdus atrogularis), Duvbo, 1 January 2010. I had just gotten my new camera so the setting where all wrong... oh well.

Next bird up for grabs was this beautiful Iceland Gull just outside Gävle. Normally a bit far for me to twitch, but since my family hails from Gävle it could be nicely combined with visiting relatives. Always good to have an excuse! ;-)


Iceland Gull (Larus glaucoides), 4cy, Bönan, 8 January 2010. By now I had started to get to know the camera better!

Only a few days into January yet, and more was to be seen. On the 17th I finally got away to see the Hawk Owl in Burunge. Very distant views (I've had better of this species), but a nice bird anyhow.


Very distant Hawk Owl (Surnia ulula). Some english-speaking birders had gotten hold of snow shoes and skis and were trying to get closer to the bird which was seen across some fields. I don't think they'd ever used that equipment before to judge from their falling... but I was impressed that they went for it! I really hope they got great views as they were trying so hard.

In February I saw my first ever Glaucous Gull in the middle of Stockholm, and the month also brought some other good species such as Two-barred Crossbill, Jack Snipe and Shore Lark.


Glaucous Gull (Larus hyperboreus), Stockholm, 6 February 2010.


Shore Lark (Eremophila alpestris), Ullnatippen, 14 February 2010.

March is a month for listening to owls, and clocked up Eagle, Ural and Tengmalm's Owls, all heard really well nearby. No rarities this month though, but it doesn't really matter as spring birds start to trickle in.

In the shift March-April I went to Landsort in the southern-most Stockholm archipelago. Brilliant place, loads of great birds. Days were mostly spend counting Eiders, but we walked around the island a lot as well, seeing loads of migrating passerines. Bushes were full of Robins, Chaffinches, Goldcrests and it was fun studying the Dunnocks feeding next to the bird observatory; normally they're very shy and hard to see.

April is a wonderful month with more migrants arriving all the time, and often a few rarities. It was a real bonus finding my first ever Wryneck while just taking a small stroll in the local woods before uni. Not a rare species here, but I'd had problems connecting with one, so it was brilliant to find one myself!
Late April also brought a Hoopoe to Älvkarleby, so up we went to see it. Wasn't able to go until dusk, so it was a bit dark, but not to bad since the bird showed brilliantly. Great, since my only other sighting (on Öland) of this spectacular bird was very brief and only in flight.




Hoopoe (Upupa epops), Älvkarleby 26 April 2010.


Will stop there since I am tired and want to go to bed. Next part tomorrow... hopefully!

I give up

Four times I have visited Kälsta now. Four times going to this place where (supposedly) a Lapland Bunting can be found. Pretty much everyone else has seen it, but not me. Hours spent there have turned up nothing but Yellowhammers, and no matter how people say the Lapland shound be amongst them... it simply isn't. Not when I'm there. Now I give up. I won't see that one.

A White-tailed Eagle on the way back was a poor consolation.


Adult White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), Österunda

Yesterday I went to Stockholm, to Råstasjön where Water Rails can be seen in winter. This lake is situated in the middle of Stockholm suburbs, and is a popular place for people to walk. The rails can be found in a small area in the north, just by the walking path, making it a lot of fun to watch them since they're so close. Yesterday we only saw one (there's supposed to be two this winter), but as it showed down to a metre I won't complain! It's also fun there since ordinary people stop to look at them, and I always feel it is a great thing that they get to see some unusual birds. Especially kids, which is why I lent two kidsmy binos yesterday, so they could see the rail better. (It was a few meters away, hiding behind some bushes at the time.) It just makes me happy seeing those kids being amazed by the bird. Maybe some future birders? Who knows?

There's also a large flock of Grey Herons at the lake, being fed by the municipality. Apparently the story goes that an old man started giving them herrings every day in the winter many years ago, and when he couldn't do it any more the municipality stepped in and continued the tradition. Also very popular with the public, I mean, herons are impressive birds seen up close!


Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea), Råstasjön

Snow snow snow

The last few days have been characterised by snow and clouds. The kinds of weather where everything looks grey and it feels dark even in the middle of the day. It's not the most pleasant weather to be out birding, but out we went anyway! Found a few new year species, such as a group of six Snow Buntings and today a wonderful Golden Eagle soaring by the road as we came driving. It circled for a few minutes at close range, letting us see all the characteristics of a fourth winter bird, ie a 5cy now. I'm really thankful to an article in the latest issue of the local birding magazine about how to age Goldies. Lots of fun being able to age them!


Snow Buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis). Didn't take any photos this time, so the photo is of some I saw last year. Also a few Tree Sparrows in the photo. Lövstaslätten, 19 December 2010.

Also payed a visit back to Storvreta and the finches, and got a little film of them. Uploaded on Youtube, which as usual destroyed the quality of the film. It looked much better in the camera... note the Sparrowhawk entering at 0:33.

Sunny day

Started today by going past the cathedral, and today the Peregrine was sitting there. Such a beautiful bird! I'm assuming it is the same one that's been here earlier winters, this being the third, which means it's three years old now as it was in juvenile plumage the first winter. Would be really fun if it could find a partner here and breed in the city and not just winter here!


Peregrine (Falco peregrinus) on Uppsala Cathedral.

Well, failed finding any Golden Eagles, Grey Partridges or Lapland Buntings on the plains today, but saw some other nice birds such as a female Black Grouse in the forest on the way and a small flock of Long-tailed Tits. The tits especially made me very happy since they're my favourite bird, and I rarely see any. They're just so sweet, looking like fluffy snowballs on a stick, and I also like their calls.

Not much more to say, got some pictures I'm rather happy with today though.


Yellowhammers (Emberiza citrinella), Kälsta


Low sun and old barn, Kälsta

New year!

New year, and it could have started better... heavy snowfall during the night made us all wake up to loads more snow and many unploughed roads. Strong northern winds did not make the thing better, as it blew the snow onto the roads again when they had been ploughed, creating large barriers of snow to drive through.

Which turned out to be bad for our car. Somehow a belt connected to the engine came loose, and hence the battery didn't charge and the car died. Yay. It had to be towed off. Not a good start when you want to go birding a lot! The thing is also that the same car broke down almost exactly a year ago, on January 3, when we were out looking for owls, and had to be towed. Bad tradition.

Anyway, before stupid car problems we saw a few species during that first day, with White-tailed Eagle, Dipper and Collared Dove as highlights.

Today we rented a car and went back once again to Storvreta, to get the Goldfinches & Co on the year list. Saw all the usual suspects there, and managed to find two Arctic Redpolls myself in amongst the Common ones. Even got a photo of one!


Slightly better photo than the last of the Merlin (Falco columbarius). Storvreta, January 2 2011.


Very bad photo of an Arctic Redpoll (Carduelis hornemanni), Storvreta January 2 2011.

Tomorrow we hope for sunny weather, as we're going out on the plains to search for Golden Eagles, Grey Partridges and Lapland Buntings. Should be fun!

Counting finches

An experienced birder once told me that we underestimate the number of birds in flocks, except when it comes to cranes where we overestimate it. This because cranes are big and fly in loose flocks, so the flocks look very large despite not being composed of that many birds. But anyway, it wasn't cranes I was going to talk about, but those smaller ones.

So, how many birds do you think there are in this picture?


Mostly Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis) with some Common Redpolls (Carduelis flammea). Trekanten, Storvreta, December 27 2010.

The answer is 1358. (Well, approximately. Some might be a bit hidden in the photo and hard to see.) That's quite a lot of birds! Taking photos and counting birds on them are a very good way to more accurately assess the number of them than simply trying to approximate when you're out, at least if you're not an experienced bird-counter. I assume there are some people who count birds who can approximate correctly, but I can't.

But counting from a photo also seems like hard work. How do you know you haven't counted that little bird twice? The answer os very simple. Open the picture in Photoshop or similar (I use Gimp), put a grid over the picture, and use the paint tool to simply put a little dot of colour on every bird that has been counted. Count one square in the grid at a time, and note the number. This way you won't count anything twice, and if you get tired you can stop half-way through and continue later.

This is what my photo looked like when I was done: (this is the uncropped picture, the above one is cropped. So, eh, the above picture does not have 1358 birds in it, but a little less. The majority of birds are still there though, maybe 1250-1300 or so. My point still holds!)



The grid isn't shown since it was a feature in the program and not part of the picture. I just painted the number in each grid square, I'm sure some people can write down the numbers in a better way, but this worked for me. After I was done I simple added all the numbers I'd written down, and presto! I had the number of birds in the picture.
Of course I might have missed some birds, and maybe counted one too many somewhere where it was a bit hard to see, but the number should at least be more correct than me trying to approximate just using my eyes. Since this was a mixed flock of course it is a bit harder to tell how many of each species, but I approximated the Goldfinches to be about 80% with the rest being Common Redpolls (and a few other species in such low numbers I could count them, such as seven Twites, three Siskins and a single Linnet.)

I won't pretend it's not a bit tedious sitting there putting dots of paint on each and every bird in the picture though... ;-)


Part of the flock. Trekanten, Storvreta, December 27 2010.

Winter's day

Took a little walk over to mum's place this morning, to get her car. On the way I passed the feeding station in Stabby Backe, which I like to watch now and then. Nothing really special about, the usual Greenfinches, Yellowhammers, Bullfinches and tits milling around. A sharp "pix" alerted me to a male Hawfinch up in a tree. They always seem much shyer than the other birds, and he never came to the feeders while I was there.


Stabby Backe, the feeding station is in the clump of trees behind the gate.

In the afternoon drove to Storvreta, just outside Uppsala, where a huge flock of Goldfinches mixed with Redpolls had been seen. Saw two cars with birders parked by a small road, so drove there, and immediately got on to a Merlin up in a tree. Brilliant! It got chased off by a Kestrel after a short while, and started to hunt the large finch flock there. I've never seen so many Goldfinches in my life, there were at least 500 of them, probably more. And earlier in the day there had been as many as a thousand! Amongst them were loads of Common Redpolls, and we managed to find one certain and one possible Arctic in the flock when they landed in a tree. A Rough-legged Buzzard also passed by.


Merlin (Falco columbarius), Lilla Skärna, Storvreta. Very bad picture, it was the best I could do at a distance and freezing my fingers off!

Drove on a little bit and took off onto a small road on the other side of the main road, and drove along it a kilometer or two. At the end of the road found another birder I know, and chatted a bit while watching a Rough-legged Buzzard in a tree. A male Pheasant looked cold under a bush, a few Roe Deer where hiding in the snow, and then suddenly the finch flock appeared with the Merlin in close pursuit. The falcon managed to separate a Goldfinch from the rest of the flock, and chased after it at breathtaking speed and agility. The Goldfinch managed to escape into a tree though and the Merlin landed in top of a larch looking rather disappointed. Very cool to see it hunt at those speeds, and very close to us.

Eagle vs Goose

Went through some old photos on the computer, and found this video that I uploaded to Youtube. It's a White-tailed Eagle plucking a Greylag Goose, filmed by my brother (mobile phone through scope) at Kvismaren, Närke. We had gone out for a little birding, trying to show my brother and his girlfriend (who are not birders) some birds. We never thought we would see something like this!



The goose was fighting for its life, and the whole thing went on for at least 25 minutes. You can hear my brother in the film being totally struck by the whole thing.