It is not
my imagination; there are a multitude of birds in the city of Oslo now. This
must reflect the abundance of trees and bushes—plantings that have been
prioritized during the past decade’s period of urban renewal that Oslo has undergone.
Sparrows, starlings, magpies, blackbirds, pigeons, doves, thrushes, crows,
swallows, seagulls, mallard ducks and Canada geese—to name just a few. Not only
is the city lovelier after extensive urban renewal, it is livelier in the
natural sense. I can lie in bed with my eyes closed, and for a few seconds,
imagine that I am not living in a city at all—because we awake to the sound of parent
and baby magpies calling to each other in the tree outside our bedroom window. Sometimes
when it is quiet in the evenings, you can hear the gulls and the doves calling
and chirping to one another, each with their own distinctive sounds. Or when I
walk along Kirkeveien road to the tram station at Ullevål Hospital in the
morning, I watch the birds forage for insects and worms in the newly-mown grass
of the fields that surround the hospital. They’re plucky creatures and they
have a lot to teach us, if we only pay attention. The seagulls have discovered
the Akerselva River, and they can be seen flying in and around the apartment
developments along the river as well as hanging out on the islands of the inner Oslo
fjord. Sometimes they’ve landed on the balcony outside our kitchen window, and
the noise they make can be deafening. The other day we saw three of them in the
road near where we live; someone had tossed a bag of half-eaten chicken onto
the road. They were greedily scavenging what remained; my husband commented on
the fact that they eat the remains of other birds. In one sense, we can be
thankful for their scavenging traits, because they clean up the sea and now
even the land. Mallards and geese live along the water, whether it is the
Akerselva or the fjord. A pigeon flew into our dining room last week; the
weather has been so warm and nice that all the windows in our house are open
most of the time. It didn’t seem to be too scared; it flew to the top of the
hutch and then out again. It was one of the ‘tagged’ pigeons—those with a small
metal band around one leg. I read online that this tagging may be part of an
initiative by the Norwegian Bird Association to track the movements of pigeons
around the city and the Oslo area in general.
I don’t
know much about the different kinds of birds, but am beginning to be inspired
to learn more about them. I’d also like to get better at photographing them,
but that’s going to be quite tricky. I’m on the internet a lot to search for
photos of thrushes and thrashers and other birds that I know really so little
about. I found this website for those of you who might be interested in
learning about what birds there are to be found in Oslo; there are quite a few,
which was pleasant and interesting news to me: http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=noos&list=clements
