Rough Weather

I had a brief window for birding this weekend. Saturday morning was really all that was going to be on offer before rain closed in for the rest of the weekend.

I chose to hit Ämmässuo again, figuring it would be a good combo of Gulls, Passerines and Raptors.
I was almost right.

Over the past few days the annual passage of Rough Legged Buzzards has been peaking. I always like to get in on it if it happens to coincide with a weekend.

Ideally the best spot to be for this would be Soukka, but like I said I fancied a mix of birds.
Ämmässuo usually has it's share of Roughies and Saturday was no exception with ~ 17 passing over me in the hour I was there.

Rough Legged Buzzard

Passerines were in reasonable numbers, with good numbers off Chiffs and Willow warblers in the scrub, but a lot of scrambler bike activity made passer bashing difficult.

One Caspian Gull on the nearest roof seemed to be a new bird comparing to shots online, but most of the gulls were miles away on the far side of the dump, on a roof I've never seen them on before, and hope they don't make a habit of frequenting.

Caspian Gull

Nonetheless the 70x earned it's keep, and there were two interesting Caspish-looking birds on that roof. There will be Caspians turning up there for a week or two yet I dare say.

The bikes were annoying so I moved on to Suomenoja. Lots of Willow and Chiffs again, but nothing more interesting than that.

The weather was holding off longer than expected so I moved on to Laajalahti.
Raptor passage was still going strong with good numbers of Roughies and Common Buzzards going through.


Phonescoping is hard - Rough Legged Buzzard



Nearly 4 years on and it still blows my mind tat I live in a place where I can watch dozens of Rough Legged Buzzards go over my house every spring and autumn. Does. Not.Compute.

A distant Hobby could well be my last of the year, and a couple of White Tailed Eagles made up the rest of the raptors.

A good number of juvenile Ruff were still present on the mud, as were large numbers of Barnacle geese and a few Russian Whitefronted.

A single Great White Egret is still present (or a new bird in over the course of the week), with 8 Scaup being the best of the rest. 





A productive few hours all in all. The predicted rain did indeed move in and that was that for the weekend. Here's to better weather next week.

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