More geese
There were more and more geese in Siikalahti area every day. On the 4th of October we went to count the geese that came to stay night in Siikalahti bay and we saw 10 000 Barnacle Geese, 200 Tundra Bean Geese, 200 White-fronted Geese, 1 Canada Goose and 1 Brent Goose. There were also 340 Whooper Swans and even 66 Bewick’s Swans!
On the 6th of October we participated to a national Birding place -competition that FotoFennica had organized. It was a good idea to organize this kind of happening on international EuroBirdWatch -weekend. In this competition a team had to find birds in one place by feet. The competition started already at midnight but we went to Siikalahti at 6:30 a.m. just about 45 minutes before the sun rise. And then we stayed there in Siikalahti until the end of the competition, 6 p.m.
In our team there were me, Hanna “Potu” Suojarinne, Matti Lötjönen and Veijo Vilska. Hanna spent the first 6 hours in a tent that we had put up to the field where the geese were feeding. She took more than 25 gigabytes of pictures!
The weather was perfect and southern wind stopped more and more geese to the fields and to the bay, only White-fronted Geese kept on migrating and we counted altogether 7000 White-fronted or unidentified grey geese. 4 White-tailed Eagles, 2 Goshawks and some hunters were scaring the local geese and at least 11 000 Barnacle Geese were flying over us many times and it was amazing!
Other birds we saw during the competition were: a Golden Eagle, a very late Marsh Harrier, 2 Rough-legged Buzzards, 2 Common Buzzards, a Merlin, 2 Red-throated Divers, 21 Long-tailed Ducks, a Golden Plover, 3 White-backed Woodpeckers, 2 Wrens, a Chiffchaff, 350 Waxwings and altogether we saw 78 species!
During the day many people visited Siikalahti and they all got amazing experiences with the geese!
The last our of the competition we spent again in the tower where we could see all the geese again coming to the bay to stay over night. Amazing!
We came 4th in the competition. The winner was Lappeenranta, Joutseno Konnunsuo where were more than 70 birders in a huge area (and I am pretty sure they all weren’t walking). The second was Espoo Laajalahti (85), 3rd Parainen, Korppoo Utö (81) and 5th after us was Lemland Lågskär (75). Altogether 21 places were participating.
On Sunday 7th of October Hanna went to photograph geese again but many Barnacle Geese had left during the night and there were many hunters so Hanna didn’t get that many good pictures. I did a brief visit to Saari where I saw still 5000 Barnacle Geese and a late Northern Wheatear.
When I was back in Siikalahti I saw an extremely late Honey Buzzard migrating. Soon Hanna had got enough of geese too and when the weather was changing worse we decided to drive home to rest.
J.A.