A second calendar year Scarlet Rosefinch was found singing in Kalandsvika nature reserve two days ago. The reserve is located about ten kilometers south of Bergen in western Norway. Being only the third record in the municipality, the bird became quite popular among local birders. I visited the site this morning. Half an hour after my arrival at 6:30, 33 species were already recorded, but there was no sign of the Rosefinch. However, just before the rain started pouring down at about 7:00, the Scarlet Rosefinch eventually sang a few strophes. After a minute or so it entered silence mode again.

Another great sighting in Bergen was done by local birder Walter Lemme two days ago. He found a male Red-backed Shrike at Tausamyrane, at the foothills of mount Gullfjellet (the highest mountain in Bergen, reaching an altitude of 1 000 masl.). It was reported several times in the same area yesterday,  and I gave it a try today. Fellow birder Bert de Bruin was already at the site when I arrived, and he had already located the bird. He had seen a female as well, making everything more interesting! We studied the birds for half an hour, and noticed several behavioral traits related to breeding. Red-backed Shrikes are far from annual breeders in the county, and this was only the 4th. record ever for Bergen municipality.

When watching the pair of shrikes, a slightly familiar birdsong was uttered from Salix vegetation close to us; a Scarlet Rosefinch! The bird was moving around while singing, and we got short views of it before it left us (for good?). Like the bird in Kalandsvika, it was a 2nd. calendar year male. The fourth record in Bergen, and generally a really rare bird in the county.

At lunchtime Thursday 5 October 2023 fellow birder Bert de Bruin was in the field, and sent a photo of a deviant flycatcher he just had seen. Bert and another birder, Julian Bell, had just left the bird that was present an hours drive from Bergen in Western Norway. It looked like a stange Spotted Flycatcher, which it also was initially identified as. However, Bert was not satisfied with this, and sent a picture for comments. The boc-pic was rather poor, but the bird did look stange. The prominent eye-ring that was clearly visible broke the legs of the spotted idea, and was the beginning of the largest twitch in Hordaland county up to date. 

The Dark-sided Flycacher is breeding in Central and Southeast Siberia, and spend the winter in Southeast Asia. It has only been recorded once before in Europe and the Western Palearctic before, at Iceland on 1 October 2012.

Recording sound is a great way to get in-depth knowledge about what bird species lives near the recorder, and when they do sing. The figure below show how many species that were recorded each hour for 24 hours in mid May at Frøya, on the coast outside Trondheim in Norway.

A total of 37 species was recorded during the 24 hour period. Redshank and Lapwing (local breeding birds) were recorded most frequent, and they made sound in 21 of the 24 hours. The recording device was a Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter Mini.

Just before 11 a.m. on Friday 28th. of October 2022 I received a call from fellow birder Eirik Nydal Adolfsen. He was whispering.

- Frode, I've just found a new bird for Norway. A Common Yellowthroat! 

Eirik, a legendary local rarity finder with an impressive avian-rarity_finding_cv. was calling from Sæle, about 60 kilometers northwest of Bergen. This was it!

​Twitchers from the Bergen area were on site within an hour or so, but the bird proved to be extremely skulky. It had not been seen or heard after the initial observation. I was pretty lucky though, after an hour or so, The Star briefly showed well just in front of me. It was jumping from branch to branch on Rhododendron-bushes, just above the ground - and disappeared just as fast as it had popped up. Only two of us saw it, and the bird was not seen during the rest of the day. I managed to shoot a few photos, but all the settings on the camera were locked and fucked up - max speed and iso in really dark conditions. The pictures below are therefore extremely brightened and enhanced in Photoshop. 

Hurds of twitchers visited the site during the following weekend, but the bird proved to be extremely elusive. Many of the visitors were not able to spot it.

Through my home-office window I have been able to study some of the hundreds of Bramblings that have visited my feeder this winter. There is lots of variation in the plumage, but usually only when it comes to the abrasion of head feathers; the more abraded, the more black they (males) appear. 

However, some very few males (have not seen this in females) have so-called pea-throats. This means that they have a white throat with variable distribution. Most only show a pea-sized spot below the bill, and one male also showed an all white throat patch, streaching from the bill to the chest (see below).