We have just surpassed 400 species with our latest forest trip to the north of Sweden. It felt good to go birding at home, although birding in the Swedish winter forest can be slow. It’s cold and snowy, and it is far between the birds.
We started out with a recently reported Stellar’s Eider on the coast of Medelpad just north of Sundsvall. Beautiful, cold sea.
After a cold walk out on the point, I had a short glimpse of a bird with clear wing bands and called out the bird. It disappeared and we searched for hours through the small flocks of Common Eider, quite a few of the females had good wing bands so we concluded that my initial observation was wrong. We came to the conclusion that the reporter had stringed the Common Eider I saw, and that was later confirmed by the original reporter.
Spirits still high, we put this setback down to our normal mode of operandi. This has now happened several times, we start out with a dip and then later strike gold.
Next day was allocated to normal forest birding inland from Sundsvall, and we quickly found a number of good forest birds.
This area of Sweden is the epicenter of fowls, thus just spending time in the right forest habitat should deliver Black Grouse and Capercaillie. The Hazel Grouse is usually tricker. The Capercaillie has now sailed up as the most-discussed-bird since we didn’t find a single one during our Norrland trip. Unbelievable. Almost none of the forest birds can be easily located, you have to just spend time in the forest. The Siberian Jay comes to feeders though.
The Pine Grossbeak is the opposite, you just have to be lucky.
In the afternoon we decided to drive further north towards a well known spot for Great-grey Owl close to Umeå, small village called Degernäs. Björn Melin (who tagged along on this trip to Norrland) eventually found the majestic Owl just before dark, much to the joy of the other birders there – also searching for the owl.
At Degernäs, we met a local birder who seemed to know his stuff. We told him that we were planning to visit a spot nearby for Grey-headed and Lesser-spotted Woodpeckers. Yeah, he said that’s good, and there is also the Woodpecker we cannot name there – just so you know. We immediately picked up on that and went into full Voldemort mode. The whereabouts of White-backed Woodpecker in Sweden is semi-secret. There are a few known spots, where birders visit, however there are most certainly quite a few secret spots. This turned up to be one of those, and sure enough the White-backed Woodpecker was there. Impossible to miss. In a manner it was a shame he told us about it since we’d already decided to go there. Had we just found a WB Woodpecker on chance – We would have screamed.
We ticked the Hazel Grouse the same morning, first we heard it playing it’s low-volume high-pitch sound. Later we got good views of two males feeding on seeds in the trees.
Dipper was also ticked in the area.
The remainder of the day was spent looking for fowls, mostly by driving slow on small forests roads. We saw, Elk, wolf tracks and Reindeers. The Reindeers are not wild, they are kept by the Sami.
Next day, we continued to search for fowl, eventually we found a flock of Black Grouse, no Capercaillie though.
Finally got good views of the (so far only heard) Grey-headed Woodpecker too.
Decided to give up on the fowl and go south, towards Uppland where I own a small cabin in Esarby which is a good area for both fowl, but in particular for Owls. The evening in northern Uppland produced an abundance of playing Tengmalm’s Owl. Next morning, well deserved we slept late (partly due to the drinking session in the cabin) and went back to Stockholm.
Next birding day, we went south searching for some missing species reported in the Stockholm area.
Much of this day was allotted to the search of Lesser-spotted Woodpecker. During the day as a whole, we visited a large number of well knows spots for the species. The Lesser-spotted Woodpecker should be easy, but it’s still lacking on our list. The afternoon we went north towards Uppland (picking up a Glaucous Gull downtown Stockholm)
and the evening was spent with good friend and awesome birder Johan Södercrantz who showed us the Ural Owl in northern Uppland. The Ural Owl was our #400 tick. Here we are, anxiously waiting for the Ural Owl to start displaying.
On the way back, Johan suggest a long-shot, a place he knew that had kept wintering Short-eared owls in the past. And, sure enough, in the dark with a powerful torchlight we found the owls. It’s the first time anyone of us ever saw this day-active owl in the dark.