Rough Housing

The time of Rough Legged Buzzard migration is upon us, meaning that they can be found pretty much anywhere at the moment.

These two ad males came over the house together the other day.

Last weekend was spent at our Hämeenkyrö mökki enjoying the Autumn feel to things.

Black Grouse - a local stop in decent habitat produced 7-8 male Black Grouse sitting around in trees, and the sound of yet more lekking birds from the near by bog. It's a sound I could listen to all day.

They really are spectacular looking birds. Incredible blues and blacks, contrasting against those white underwings and red comb.

As we were shuttering up the cottage for the Winter, Hanna picked up a calling Yellow-Browed Warbler in the copse beside the Sauna.

Yellow-Browed Warbler - as is frequently the case with rare/scarce warblers in Finland, always high up in the canopy.

Saturday we made a quick trip through Lohja. Not much in the way of decent gulling here, except for a late Baltic Gull, probably due to the frequent presence of White-Tailed Eagle.

White-Tailed Eagle - juvenile

Baltic Gull - not very numerous at Lohja dump for some reason, so always noteworthy.

We then nipped through Myrans where at least 6 Rough-Legged Buzzard were mooching around the fields including this 2CY female.

Rough Legged Buzzard - 2CY female.

Sunday started out very well, taking Lyra to the playground beside our home and finding a calling Yellow-Browed Warbler. This bird was audible from our garden before moving through it with the mixed tit flock.

Yellow-Browed Warbler - is there any call that is more synonymous with Autumn than this?

Yellow-Browed Warbler is a pretty regular scarcity through Finland, much like in Ireland, though with a bigger land mass involved here, "more is less" so to speak, as even though there may be more birds involved, they are spread throughout the country.

There is also the issue that goes hand in hand with passerine watching here, in that you're dealing with an abundance of trees for many such birds. Consequently, I usually don't encounter many Yellow-Browed in a year here, maybe only coming across one each Autumn. Even then I do not always see the bird in question, perhaps just hearing the call from deep in the forest (or even going over at night, which I didn't realize they do until one night walking home here).

Finding/encountering 3 so far this Autumn is well above average for me. Likely this is a consequence of more time out and about in daylight what with working from home, though my gut tells me that perhaps it's an above average year numbers wise, and I suspect it will be an excellent Autumn for them in Britain and Ireland.

Whatever the case, it's an excellent garden tick and puts our lockdown list on an even 130 species. 

With that target reached, I now have to extend the goalposts out. 135 would be an excellent result if we can get there. It's doable, but will take some good birds to get there at this point.

A quick visit to Saltfjarden later on was very quiet, with this juvenile Goshawk the best in offer.