The other day I was scanning throgh the visitor log at my Flickr-account. I was glad to see that the general activity is increasing, and lots of people are both watching and commenting on my pictures. However, a picture of a Ground Tit from Tibet in 2004 has recently received quite a few visits. It has been a steady flow of visitors during the last month. OK, I thought, somebody has put out a link to the picture. When digging into the weblog I found that all hits came from the Flickr search engine. Expanding the referral search terms revealed the reason. The search term "Wife's tits" directed 75% of the visitors to the Ground Tit last month!

If you read the caption below the picture (click on the picture to see original and caption) I mention the translated Tibetan name of the Ground Tit; "wife of the Pika". Combine this with parts of the species name, and the popular term is complete. I don't know if that is the kind of visitiors I target with my pics, but they are most welcome, and may have learned a little bit about this spectacular ground dwelling passerine?

I've had a similar experience earlier, but then the visitors came from searches in Google. The term back then was "chicks in Oslo", and they ended up on this page.

I've got a few blockers in the meaning "species not seen by me" in Norway. One of the most common birds in this dubious list has been the Citrine Wagtail Motacilla citreola. In addition to being absent on my Norwegian list, it was also missing on my Hordaland county list (much more important of course). Two days ago I recieved a call from fellow birder Eirik Nydal Adolfsen about a first-winter Citrine Wagtail seen at Herdla bird sanctuary, about 45 minutes drive from Bergen. I rang my neighbour and birder Arild Breistøl, and we (including my 4 year old son) were off to Herdla.

We arrived about 13:00, and went straight out to the flooded fields where it was last seen. It did not take us long to locate it, and we got great views when it was feeding on the dirt track 50 meters in front of us. My 278th. species on the county list :-)

We enjoyed the bird from a distance of 40-50 meters through the telescope, and got great views of all characteristics clinching the bird as a Citrine Wagtail. Note especially the broad white edges on the greater and median coverts, creating two solid wing-bars. The upperparts were brownish grey, and the chest missed any significant darker spots or marks. The ear-coverts were surrounded by an off white line. It did also call, a distinct "tsriit" - completely different from both White Wagtails and Norwegian Yellow Wagtails.

This bird constitutes the 10th. record for Hordaland county. Nine of these have been autumn birds (8 first-winters and one adult) in the period 25 August to 2 October. The first spring record was done in May 2013, when a male was briefly seen and photographed at Herdla. There were 141 records in Norway up to and including 2011.