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2024 Round Up

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2024 has come to an end.  Since September there have been some good birds on offer.  A nearby Red-Breasted Goose gave good views at Haapajärvi in October. Always an excellent treat in late autumn. Red-Breasted Goose A Hoopoe present at Inkoo made for a good family twitching outing. As they so often do, the bird performed well once I refound it. Hoopoe - Inkoo  The Tsuchinshan–ATLAS comet was also nice to see. A wintering Barred Warbler in Espoo was a real treat. I haven't seen Barred Warbler in ten years, when I saw several Juveniles on Jurmo island. Barred Warbler was once (before my time in Finland) a regular breeding species in Finland. It is somewhat sad these days to visit birding sites and see them depicted in old notice boards as breeding there. They are still regular as a migrant, and they often turn up in city parks etc, this is just the first one I bothered to go for. Barred Warbler It's easy imagine that the decline in Barred Warbler numbers here and elsewhere ...
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Super Hot September

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A really, abnormally hot September just gone. A weather system that really affected bird migration with it being notably quieter for certain types of birds, particularly raptors which I would normally be putting the effort in for.  Things started out well with a vagrant Lesser Grey Shrike on the east side of Helsinki. Lesser Grey Shrike - rare, but multi-annual in Finland. They don't always turn up somewhere convenient to the capital though. I count myself lucky if I see one once every two years maybe. A fantastic species. The parental units then arrived for a two week visit from Ireland, and for a change we made our way out west to the Uusikaupnki area. On the way, myself and d'oul fella stopped off at Turku dump where an number of Caspian Gulls made themselves instantly available. Caspian Gull - 1st Winter. A tall, lanky bird with very long scaps and mantle feathers and generally dark tone. Looked new based on the various shots available online, but always difficult to say at...
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