Tonight’s veggie pizza (with part of the bread dough as I’m also baking bread this evening) had some unusual for me ingredients: perennial kales, a mix of oriental brassicas (pak choy, mizuna, mustard greens etc.), various spring onions (all hacked out of the frozen soil) with garlic, chili, oregano, dried fungi – Albatrellus ovinus (fåresopp in Norwegian) and topped with dried seed of highly invasive himalayan balsam (kjempespringfrø), the seeds of which are quite attractive (see the picture)
Daily Archives: November 9, 2019
Jackdaws over the bay and house
A large flock of around 800 Jackdaws (kaie) soared playfully above the bay this afternoon in the cold air (approaching a week of sub-zero C temperatures), probably put up by a hawk…and waxwings in the garden seemed to be being entertained by the performance!
Surrounded by waxwings
I was working in the garden this afternoon when a large flock of some 400 waxwings arrived. They are quite trusting and happily fed on hawthorn berries as I stood a few metres away…
Pine grosbeaks in the garden
Great excitement this morning! I noticed a flock of birds from my desk that landed in a rowan tree. My first impression was fieldfares (gråtrost) and waxwings (sidensvans) but neither seemed quite right! Through binoculars I saw immediately they were pine grosbeaks (konglebiter) which are large finches! Rowan berries are their preferred winter food A new species for my garden, adding weight to my theory that if you wait long enough they will come to you! This was the species I had most wanted to see and had been looking out for them as there is a big invasion on in my area! I managed to get a very short video from which the two still pictures are taken before the whole flock (27) flew off westwards, the biggest number ever recorded in Malvik Kommune :)
A “slightly” better picture of these beauties from Wikicommons (Ron Knight from Seaford, East Sussex, United Kingdom):