I never weary of watching waxwings (sidensvans). Here are 3 videos from snowy Monday this week when one of the biggest flocks this winter descended on the garden with some 330 birds estimated from the first video below, many of which fed on the last elderberries (second and third videos below)!
NB! The windows are now clean :)
Monthly Archives: December 2019
Fieldfare drinking snow
Heavy snow and mother of pearls
Woke up this morning to a beautiful sight of deep snow on the balcony and mother of pearl clouds (perlemorskyer) in the sky. Added to the garden full of birds all day (still over 200 waxwings / sidensvans), a white-tailed eagle soaring over the bay and herons (gråhegre) flying past, it doesn’t get much better. I even enjoyed the hour shoveling snow!
Apparently there hasn’t been so much snow in Trondheim for 93 years so early in December (much less snow here than higher up though).
However, the forecast tomorrow is +8C and 30mm of rain…with the soil below frozen, this could become quite a mess!
Norwegian Seed Savers establish a guild for Perennial and Forest Gardening vegetables
KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) have established a guild for perennial vegetables and food forest vegetables (free for members of KVANN, go to kvann.no and click on “Bli med i KVANN” to join)
Norw: Nå er KVANNs laug for Flerårige og Skogshage Grønnsaker formelt etablert og vi har en FB gruppe som venter for dere som er interessert å være med (gratis og kun for medlemmer av KVANN). Det blir en del godbiter kun for laugmedlemmene i løpet av vinteren og et permagrønnsaks-kurs i Malvik til våren primært for medlemmene! Gå til https://www.facebook.com/groups/818621048572751 og svarer på spørsmålene for å melde deg inn!
210 Waxwings
A big flock of 210 waxwings (sidensvans) in the garden resting at dusk in the garden! It’s been a very active day here…
Snow birds
Two days of snow has attracted a large flock of birds to my bird feeder with some 30 bramblings (bjørkefink) and, nice to see, around 25 house sparrows (gråspurv), largely missing in recent years.
Even waxwings (sidensvans) are attracted although they don’t stay for long.
Synchronised waxwings
Some things happen just too fast for us to notice. Yesterday I made this video of a flock of waxwings:
I stopped the film and took the following screen grab and noticed that a couple of the birds were in gliding flight, looking like bullets:
I took another screen grab one second on and to my astonishment almost all the birds had synchronised into gliding flight:
Apparently, this synchronisation of waxwing flocks is well known ( similar to starlings). Have a look in slow motion: