Hel Hath No Birdies

A recent thread on birdforum got me thinking about Scopoli's Shearwater again. The original poster provided two images for ID, with one suspected of being a Scopoli's (top here) and obviously so, and the other a Cory's in similar conditions. After years of watching both Scopoli's and Cory's in seawatching conditions (rather than from pelagics) I was of the opinion that Scopoli's often has an appearance of having a narrower, paler more broken leading edge to the hand between the carpal joint and the base of P10.  So I decided to run an image survey of both Scopoli's and Cory's to try and assess this. (Fair use applies to all images used here). Scopoli's examples Cory's examples Quantification of these things can be difficult, but I attempted to apply a scoring system, between 0 and 3 to the primary lesser and median coverts, and the marginal coverts in terms of "thickness" (i.e how far dark feathering extended towards the median of great

Upon return to Finland, I had my eye on what is most likely a returning Sociable Plover in Loviisa, now in a spectacular full summer plumage.  I left unfortunately a bit late on the morning I ran down. About 20 mins from the site news came through that the bird had been looked for all morning without success. Not the best thing to hear. I carried on regardless, arrived at the location, and immediately picked it up with bins at the back of a ploughed field. Sociable Plover - fantastic! The bird gave good views for about 5 minutes (though it was a bit hazy), before the flock suddenly took flight and headed south.  After about an hour, I relocated the bird in a huge flock of Lapwing, but it wasn't as showy as the previous location. Eventually the birds all lifted again and headed back north, but this time I couldn't relocate them.  A 2CY male Montagu's Harrier spent a few days on the local patch of Saltfjarden. Montagu's Harrier  The bird gave good scope views as it quarte