Hel Hath No Birdies

Germany.  As the Simpsons put it - Ze land of chocolate. I'm here for an occasion of craic, my Brother's stag weekend. But over the past week I've become more and more preoccupied with the long term presence of a certain Black Browed Albatross. I no longer class myself as a twitcher...so instantly you now realize this post is about twitching.  Filthy twitching. Unashamed, blatant, unabashed, unforgivable twitchage. I won't offer any attempt at rationalization. I don't think I need to. It's an albatross. I am writing this, as I move over the course of the trip, like a sort of live blog. An explanation is a pre-requisite. Why, am I currently on a train headed out of Hamburg, headed towards the coast? I should be beering it up with my brother at this very moment. Indulging in Germany's finest currywurst washed down with a cold weissbier, ja? The "friendly racism", as I like to call it, will likely only increase in this p...

Eurasian Nutcracker. Cracking birds! Shamless pun, which I promise will be the last, because I have integrity. Nutcracker was a species I encountered on my first ever winter visit to Finland, and I've loved them ever since. They are a bird which, more than being just attractive (which I think we can agree, they are), have amazing character. A large wintering flock spends it's time in mixed hazel and conifer woods, with a feeder, near our cabin in Lohja. I often take the time in winter to spend an hour or so watching them at close range from the car. As long as the temperature will allow me to really. Vocally, nutcracker is astounding. Their standard call, a strange, nasal mix between Jay and Corncrake is delightful, but on top of this you get a huge variety of contact and communicative calls, and the hierarchy system at the feeder is a good place to listen to these. Nutcracker - cracks your nuts ...

Another visit to the cabin went down over the weekend.  Really great weather and atmosphere out there at the moment.  Misty mornings, sunny days, cool evenings, and the sound of Black Woodpecker, Grey Headed Woodpecker and Black Throated Divers whilst you drink your morning coffee is blissful.   Misty Saturday morning with amazing Black Woodpecker calls I started out, on a misty Saturday morning, by hitting Lohja dump for a couple of hours. Like most dumps in Finland, this site is winding down activities. It does still attract a reasonable number of gulls, however, and of course seems a good prospect for raptors and passerines. Last autumn, like many dumps in Finland, it held one of the Siberian Accentors of that crazy influx, so always potential here.  Not much on display Saturday morning though. Reasonable count of juv Herring gulls, which were constantly milling about due to the presence of this male Goshawk. Even when you're dealing with a ...

Days like today, I miss seawatching. Everything about the weather reminded me of squally days on Galley or the Bridges of Ross, the temperature and moisture of the air, the scent of it, the feel of the humidity on my skin. I don't count the Baltic as a sea. It's not particularly salty. It has no tides. It barely has any wave action. That's a lake. A big lake. But a lake nonetheless. This popped up on my social media reminders today, and I was suddenly hit with memories of sea breezes, crashing waves and the sound of seabirds. Madeiran Petrel - by Robert Vaughan On the 18th of July, 2010 I saw this beauty from Galley Head, co. Cork. It's as clear as memory to me now as it was 7 years ago.  Watching scores of petrels flutter past on an incredible misty morning that everyone else (bar Rónán McLoughlin) had written off as not worth the effort. One birder had even driven to the head, looked out to sea, and decided to go home to bed. Oh the humanity....

A fairly warm and sunny weekend, which you would think would be no obstacle to birding. Unfortunately, these kind of weather conditions in Finland, in July, are not the best for viewing birds. Most songbirds have given up singing now, and by the time 9a.m rolls around it can be too hazy to deal with. I decided to chance my arm with a bit of gulling on Saturday morning at Ammassuo dump, half hoping for a juv Caspian gull, which should be starting to turn up any day now... Only kidding, Large gulls suck, I was actually hoping for a raptor of some decency. As this rather tasty looking Steppe Eagle is located down in Turku, I was thinking it, or something equally good could be soaring around. When I pulled up an adult White Tailed Eagle was instantly obvious over the dump, quickly followed by a displaying male Honey Buzzard. But that was pretty much it on the raptor front. The gull front wasn't worth talking about. I then moved on to an area of fields near Kauhala. ...