Hel Hath No Birdies

Saturday saw us take a trip up to Vanjärvi, again looking for grey geese. With some 6000 in the area, consisting of Tundra and Taiga Bean, Russian Whitefronted and Barnacle geese, we were not disappointed. However, whilst the birding was good, distance was a factor for most of the geese (being a large lake) and most did not play ball for phonescoping. A closer flock of Tundra Bean Geese allowed for some pics and getting familiar with variety in bill shape and pattern. These two Tundra are Taiga wannabees, and as close as it gets in terms of bill structure. Tundra Bean Goose - showing a "pinched" bill shape. This is not uncommon, occurring when you have a longer billed tundra where the orange band comes right to the bill edges, exacerbating the effect of a narrowed tip. As with most Tundra, focus on the structure of the bill base is best. A particularly jowly Tundra Bean Goose - I virtually never see this jowl effect with Taiga. Some nice Russian Whitefronted Geese were also a...

Beautiful weather this weekend saw temperatures rise to a tropical 12°C, resulting in actual sunburn whilst enjoying Saturday's visible migration. It was all about big dinosaur like birds. I started with some nice Crane flocks nearby. Common Crane Even in early morning a heat haze was rising, making phonescoping difficult.  I made my way back to Inkoo to chance my arm with the geese again. The heat haze made phonescoping non-viable, but the flock dynamic had changed entirely, a reduced number in general, no Pink Footed Geese, and the beans were now mostly Taiga Bean geese, as opposed to majority Tundra from the previous weekend. A pretty decent count of 45 too, trundling about among the Whoopers for comparison.  I then made my way to Saltfjarden and timed this well, as just as I arrived word came through of a White Stork headed our way. White Stork - rare but increasing. The first pair bred in the south west of Finland a couple of years back. A species benefitting from climate...

Spring. When it hits, it hits undeniably. Saturday morning, walking with Kuura, saw a tidal change to the bird-scape, as overnight Robins, Wrens and Redwing took their territories, and the sound of "tic", "trrrrrrrrrrrrrr" and the wacky song of Redwing rang out all around the neighborhood. From nowhere, a colony of Black Headed and Common Gulls appeared on the newly exposed Rocky island offshore from the house, and got down to the task of courtship, even though the lake surface remains frozen. In Ireland, we tend to think of Spring in less obvious terms, waiting on birds we know to be sub-saharan migrants, like Chiffchaff, Willow warbler etc. Here the evidence of Spring migration packs much more of a wallop, undiluted by staging areas for waders, ducks and insectivorous Passerines. So many birds, familiar to an Irish environment during the Winter, are entirely absent, by necessity, from the Finnish landscape for half the year. And when they hit, they hit hard. Robin...