Pygmy Owl!

I decided to look for owls this morning mainly because there have been many reports of Pygmy Owls in the area and because one was found yesterday evening in my local park. Eurasian Pygmy Owl is a pretty rare bird for Denmark and is undergoing a bit of an invasion now with at least 6 being seen on my island! And considering how much forest there is on the island (a lot) I'm sure there are many many more!

Anyway, while making my way towards the Pygmy Owl this morning I heard two Tawny Owls so I decided to get closer to them to find out exactly where they are so perhaps I can find them another day... if I ever have time!

The Pygmy Owl didn't disappoint. I arrived at the location where it was seen yesterday at 7:10am and there were already 2 others there who said they had just heard it calling and saw it fly. Soon enough we found it but it didn't stick around long enough for me to take a photo... doesn't matter really because it would have been a dreadful photo anyway!

Here's one from Wikipedia:

Off to class now! Waking up early is fun :)

The usual routine

I had originally thought of traveling far and wide today because every first Sunday of the month one can travel for about $3 flat rate anywhere! Usually public transit is quite expensive....
I thought I would be saving tons of money by doing that but then I realized that I can save even more money by simply biking to my local patch!
Or maybe I'm being lazy?

Either way, I began the morning the usual way - a seawatch and then moved in land for some birding in the forest.

Visibility was much improved from earlier this week almost allowing views of Sweden. A few more birds were evident most likely due to the visibility.
Eiders have increased from ~50 last week to 200 today. 1 adult Gannet flying North will probably be one of my last for the season. 51 Common Scoters (aka Black Scoters) flying South was a new species in DK for me and 1 each of Razorbill and Common Murre/Guillemot were nice to see.

After a short while in the forest I succumbed to being tired and came home. As usual I checked the bird sightings and saw that 5 Little Gulls and 1 Mediterranean Gull were seen this morning only 10 km North of where I was! So I biked over and did an exhaustive search with out any success...

There was a very tame Common Murre/Guillemot in the harbour, allowing for great photographs... but I only had my wide angle lens.
It's that bird under the dock/board walk in the middle of the picture:

Cropped a bit:

That one is actually from Newfoundland - but todays looked the exact same ;)

Vestamager

Another day of birding at Vestamager Nature Reserve yielded a few new birds putting me in first place on eBird for Denmark - not that that is really impressive because it seems that only visitors from North America have submitted sightings... and most visits are only a few weeks at the most!

The day started off misty with the sun trying to squeeze through:

Eventually it won out and the sun was shining through the trees:

Do you recognize that patch of woods?
Same spot, same trees, same sun, different month equals:

It's amazing how fast things change!

Today I went straight for the waterfowl and found a few neat birds within an hour including 8 flyover Twites, a White-tailed Eagle, and my first Smew!
Smew was one of my top targets for Denmark and so I was happy to get it :) Although it was 'only' a female.... not being sexist... but the males look quite sexy!
See for yourself:

Not sure if I'm allowed to just show that pic since it's not mine... but you can go here for the original site I stole it from.

Here's my great photo of the female:

See what I'm talking about? The female doesn't look nearly as good! :p

A couple of Whooper Swans flew overhead and a Bean Goose (of the Tundra sub-species) appeared literally 50 metres in front of where 3 of us had been doing a 'marsh watch' for a cumulative 10 hours! Just goes to show that no matter how long you look there surely is going to be something you haven't seen!

This blog is going to become painfully boring if I don't start posting decent photos...

I'm working on it ;)