Breeding bird survey in Norway: day 8

The day started as usual. The weather looked promising. The mountain was still there so no way around it. We have to do it. I was doing point counts every 300m from the route and had to do about 20 of those. The beginning was ok – the usual bunch of bushes, bogs, river and wet places. Slight ups and downs but then came the hard bit. It was only 300m but took us more than an hour to do it. Steep hills with snow, trees, cliffs and what not. It was really difficult. This was perhaps the hardest bit so far. We had to go around the steep cliffs, around the snow which was going straight down into the bottom of the hill so pretty dangerous to walk across. Once we were on the plateau everything looked a bit better. Still some snow and cliffs bit at least it wasn’t steep. Luckily we had this Rock Ptarmigan which made it all worthy. I don’t need much to be happy. Just a bird or two 😊 The view from up there was lovely though.

at work

The rest of the route was fairly ok. Only the last bit when we had to come down from the hill was again pretty unpleasant. Another bird highlight turned up there which made it worthy – a Black Grouse took not far from us.

We made it down to the bottom of the hill and congratulated ourselves with satisfaction. I was glad we managed to do this route. It had a denivelation of about 500 m.

Quickly packed our gear and off we go to the next place. We needed some rest so stopped in a local bakery shop for a cake with coffee. Pretty strange both of them but my girlfriend like them. The cake was with some light cream with very little sugar and the coffee was a black one which I personally don’t like.

En route to the next place we witnesses superb landscapes which are all around anyway. You just need the proper light conditions to enjoy them.