Amazing birding at Jæren

Fellow birder Eirik Nydal Adolfsen and I spend a weekend at a nearly birder free Jæren in western Norway early May 2004. Most local birders had set off to Lista, some 150 kilometers south of Jæren, to participate in the annual meeting for twitchers in Norway.

We arrived late on Friday evening, and did not manage to do any decent birding. When we woke up on Saturday the winds had turned towards something like southeast, with random rain showers. Wetland birding was great to start with. Several Avocets, Black-tailed Godwits and Little Gulls were feeding in Orreosen, and a few hundred meters from land a drake Ring-necked Duck was feeding along with Tufted Ducks and Scaups! Along the shore a long-staying Steller's Eider surprisingly still hung around with local Eiders.

Black-tailed Godwit.

Then we focused our efforts on "small islands" of planted Spruce, as we noticed a great fall of birds when it rained. The small woods on the outer coastline were full of migrating birds. Wrynecks, redstarts, lots of Sylvia and Phylloscopus-warblers and much more. About noon local birder Kjell Mjølsnes called and notified us about an interesting warbler, for the time not identified. Kjell was located on the other end of Jæren, so we had to drive hard to get there in time - we thought. When we arrived Kjell revealed what species he thought it was, an Eastern Bonelli's Warbler.

If this had been a normal day at Jæren, some 50 birders or so would have appeared in no time. It was quite pleasant to sit around as a quartet waiting for the rarity to show. We got some glipses, but no extatic views. When we realized how the species was singing, it became clear that it had been singing almost all the time when we were waiting!

This beautiful female Eurasian Dotterel was in a party of seven others on a field near Skeie at Jæren on the 9th. For some reason this field has been a spot-on site if you want to see Dotterels during spring in Noray.

The next morning birders had returned to Jæren, and several people got to see and hear the rarity. Eirik and I did some good birding in the wetlands, and were about to leave for Bergen when we got a call about a sighting of a Black Stork soaring over the peaks of southern Jæren. We just got in time to see it before it disappeared slowling gliding away in the haze.

Two days of birding that will be remembered for ever. Below there are more pictures from the trip, including a crap photo of the Black Stork at several hundred meters distance. All pictures are digiscoped.