February 2003
February – I got my Nikon Coolpix
Many times I have had very good possibilities to get good pictures of birds, but I have got one big problem – I haven’t got a camera! Finally I found a way of photographing which seemed perfect to me – Digiscoping. I didn’t want photographing to take too much time from other birding. I wanted to get good photos just while birding. And digiscoping was the way.
After joining a digiscoping weekend in Joensuu I was sure I have to get a camera, soon. At same Monday I called to Mikko Kataja (FotoFennica) and ordered Nikon Coolpix 4500 camera. After a few days I could get my camera with adapter to my Zeiss 85 scope, two batteries, two 128mB memory cards and electric wire-snapper.
After I got the batteries loaded, I left to photograph some birds right away. I took my scope on my back and camera hanging to my neck and left by bike to Siikalahti (The best bird-lake in Finland but of course totally frozen in these days). It was freezing (more than -20 degrees). But of course I found some common birds to “shoot”, first one was a Magpie which was having some sun on the top of the spruce. Other birds I digiscoped were Bullfinch, Hooded Crow and Waxwing.
At the last day of February I had a change to loan my father-in-law’s car and have whole weekend just birding and digiscoping. So I decided to start my trip at Simpele where was a Black-throated Thrush wintering.
While waiting THE Thrush I got one picture of a Blackbird and a Fieldfare each other – very good ones. It was again freezing, but I tried to photo 2 calendar year female Black-throated Thrush about an hour but it was very shy. The Thrush flew every time to eat in the middle of the bush and soon back to deep spruce-fence. So soon I decided to leave more South to Lappeenranta to twitch and photograph some more birds. But that trip was already March…
J.A.