The Cruise Ship Season
With all the travelling and the start of the cruise ship season by mid June, there hasn’t been much time to update my blog. Not that I have much to write about at any rate. Guiding bird watchers that are travelling along the Norwegian coast on cruise ships is time consuming to say the least, and usually doesn’t make for the best birding. First, you may have two whole days with travelling to meet the cruise ship at its port of call, only to do a 4 hour guiding stint. Then it’s back in the car to dash to the next port of call, and meet a new ship and a new group. Taking into consideration that port of calls stretch from Oslo in the south to Trondheim in the north, then you will see what I mean. When you do meet a group it can be so many as 40, so it says in itself that you don’t see many species with such large groups. What is good however is the pleasure that these birders get birding in Norway. Many are from the USA so even Fieldfares are new species for them. The last few days here at Voss have been too warm to bird of a daytime. The best thing is to sit out on the veranda with a cold beer and watch the Pied Flycatcher (photo) and 2 Twite that are nesting nearby during the day, and try and get in some birding through the night when it is cooler.
Though I haven’t used a great amount of time it has produced Common Quail, Corncrake and a couple of Grasshopper Warblers. I have now got a couple of days here at Voss before the next cruise ship on the 3/7. After that it is virtually none stop until the middle of August. I will try and update my blog when and where I can. In the mean time have a great summer.
