Saturday 1 October 2016

Varberg and surrounding area 28 - 30th September 2016

These were three days of strong SW - W winds with gusts varying between 25 - 35 mph, and periods on some days of heavy rain, which caused a temporary cessation of ringing.

28th September

We made a trip to Akulla Bokskogar in the hope of finding Black Woodpecker, and took a walk through Skogsba beech wood nature reserve on the 5.5km trail, which turned out to be the more challenging of the ten beech wood nature reserves trails we could have chosen. Unfortunately no Woodpeckers of any sort was seen, and in fact it was a fairly birdless walk, with only a Willow Tit being of any interest seen.

29th September

With the wind fairly strong I made a quick am visit to the nearby Gubbansan nature reserve to see what sea watch could be like from the west side of Sweden. They see some good birds on the right westerly winds, but on UK sea watching standards the birds tend by lower in volume. I gave it just over an hour and in that time only had a Black-throated Diver,  two Gannets, an Eider and five Red-breasted Mergnasers. The rain for the rest of the day was quite heavy so it curtailed even birdwatching.

30th September

Still fairly windy, so I headed off to Glemmen which is supposed to be the main sea bird watching area for this part of Halland. You are watching from no elevation so viewing is limited in range. In just over two hours it produced three Common Tern, then single Arctic Tern, Gannet, Pomarine Skua, Common Scoter, Little Gull and Leach's Petrel.

Mid morning we headed to Nordskog, driving and walking through the extensive forest here, with a view to trying to pick up Crested Tit, which was only heard twice, but we did manage to see Goshawk, two male and one female Capercaillie, and a Great Grey Shrike,

Female Caper

Great Grey Shrike

A Hare disturbed from the road on our way out of the forest.