At the start of May I used a lot of time to look for newly arrived Common grasshopper warbler (gresshoppesanger) males. Since 2011 I have used the same methodology. To get the most accurate arrival date on the earliest grasshopper warbler males, I check each potential territory for males using playback. If there's a male, it will react with either song or a call, or it will fly towards the speaker playing the sound, to scare away what it believes to be an intruding male. If I do this daily I will get an extremely accurate arrival date. It's a lot of work, but it's wort it.
In May of 2016 I came across six new Common grasshopper warbler males. If we add the male that I first came across on the last day of april, the total for 2016 stopped at seven males. On the island were I live, Sandsøya, and the neighboring island, Voksa, the total of males stopped at a record low three. This is the lowest number I have had on the islands since I discovered my first grasshopper warbler here in the mid 2000s.
But it wasn't all bad... On the 7th of May I came across, for me, the rarity of the year. After one of my many field days looking for grasshopper warblers on the islands, I came home and sat down at my kitchen table. My uncle was also there. Suddenly he asked me if I knew what kind of creature it was that ran over our lawn. I took a quick glance, and I almost could't believe my eyes. It was a EURASIAN STONE CURLEW (triel)! This is a huge rarity in Norway with under 30 records in total. Following a record from Frei in 2008, this was the second observation of this species in the county of Møre og Romsdal. The Eurasian Stone curlew resides in central and southern parts of Europe north to northern Germany and the UK. And to have a bird like that running just outside your house door is quite unreal!
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| Eurasian stone curlew (triel) 2cy+, Støyle, Sandsøya 7. May 2016 |
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| Eurasian stone curlew (triel) 2cy+, Støyle, Sandsøya 7. May 2016 |
Another observation worth mentioning was a pair of Corn crakes (åkerikse) heard on the south side of Sandsøya on 23rd of May. There was a singing male accompanied by a vocal female. This was my first encounter with a female Corn crake.
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When we came into June the field work in the seabird cliffs at Runde started in earnest. There I monitor species like the Atlantic puffin (lunde), Black-legged kittiwake (krykkje), European shag (toppskarv), the Great skua (storjo) and so on. I have been doing field work here since 2009, so that means that this was my eight season at Runde.
Other than fieldwork at Runde and in Ålesund, both on the same seabird monitoring project, there was little to mention in June. The Corn crake male first heard on the 23rd of May was still around singing. It was followed by a second singing male. That meant that for the first time ever I had two singing Corn crake (åkerrikse) males at Sandsøya at the same time. There was also heard a singing Common quail (vaktel) at Voksa on the 26th of June and on the 4th of July.
This is a archive photo of a singing Corn crake male from 2011. This bird was in fact heard singing as early as on the 2nd of May, as one of the earliest spring sightings of this species in Norway ever recorded.
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| Corn crake (åkerrikse) 2cy+ male, Våge, Sandsøya 3. May 2011 |
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August
This month there was once again not much to talk about, at least not rarity-wise. On the night of the 19th and 24th of August, I did something that I have been doing since I got my ringing license i 2013, namely ringing European storm-petrels (havsvale). This year I caught 30 petrels in two ringing sessions. 29 of them got a metal ring, and one had a ring from before. Just to be out in the late summer night and at the same time get close to a small seabird species like the European storm-petrel, is for me the best. I think that many more people should get the chance to do something like that...
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| European storm-petrel (havsvale) 2cy+, Hellandsvågane, Sandsøya 19. August 2016 |
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