Very rare winter-bird

On the 18th of February I was birding a couple of hours as it was the first day of the year when the sun was shining and even warming a little bit. In Siikalahti I saw a Great Grey Shrike and in Tyrjänkoski I walked in half meter snow to the rapid where a Dipper was found. The second Great Grey Shrike of the day was seen when I was driving back home.

On the 19th of February I woke up at 9 and soon I was driving towards Lappeenranta. I had planned to continue to Taipalsaari to twitch a Grey Partridge which I still had never seen in South Karelia. I was already in Joutseno when I got a call from Pekka Punnonen who told that Martti Riikonen had just seen a Green Sandpiper in Toikansuo! It had been the first ever Green Sandpiper in Finland in February! So I continued straight there.

After 20 minutes I parked to Toikansuo where already were some local birders but the sandpiper had been missing for 30 minutus already. It had disappeared to a ditch so we waited it to show up but after an hour we decided that we had to try something else. We walked along the ditch and nothing was found. So we continued along the ditch for several kilometres but only one another bird was found – a Jack Snipe.

After a long walk in a deep snow I Luckily managed to get a lift from Jarmo Pirhonen back to the original place. We were just turning towards Toikansuo when I noticed some movement on the ditch and there it was, a Green Sandpiper was jumping from a rock to another. We stopped the car a also “jamppa” saw the bird soon. Also Sampsa Cairenius, Seppo Korpela and Matti Vanhapelto were there soon but the rest of birders were still waiting for a lift or walking back along the ditch. Soon the bird flew along the ditch behind a corner and as wh knew there were many twitchers coming soon from Helsinki too we decided not to try to walk after it but wait it to come back.

After some waiting nothing was seen, so we decided to drive to a sewage water pools nearby to check if it was there. Only 300 Mallards and 2 Teals were found so we were sure that the bird had to be just behind the corner. The twitchers hadn’t arrived yet so we decided to continue to Taipalsaari to try to twitch a Grey Partridge with Sampsa Cairenius.

After 30 minutes driving we parked in Saikkola and started to search for a partridge from a garden and spruce-fences around it. We had walked around the whole garden once when a owner of the house came to shout us that the bird was just in front of the feeder! But we coulnd’t see it! We walked closer and closer and he told that he could see it all the time. Then suddenly Grey Partridge flushed just in front of us! The owner of the house had been standing a little bit higher so he had seen the head of the bird all the time, but it had been in so deep snow that we couldn’t see it at all. But after all we were very happy – we had got a new South Karelia tick.

We still stopped in Tirilä but the weather was turning very bad so Hawfinched weren’t seen. We also got a message that a Green Sandpiper had been found in the place where we had thought it was and finally everyone had seen it!

On the way back home I still stopped along Vuoksi river where I saw 2 Whooper Swans and a Cormorant before I continued to Parikkala.

J.A.