July 2003
July – Holiday…a kind of
In the beginning of July we (Me, Hanna and our Catalonian friends Oriol and Toni) started our trip to North-Karelia, Kainuu and Kuusamo. Eastern Finland VI-VII (The whole trip, for example: Arctic Warbler, Red-breasted Flycatchers, Grey Wagtails, night with 14 BEARS, Black Kite, Little Buntings, maurus Stonechat, Red-flanked Bluetails, Carrion Crow with hybrid fledlings…)
After Oriol and Toni left back to Catalonia, we rest few days and started our another holiday trip to Lapland (for example Pallid Harrier, Gyr Falcon, Dotterel family, Ptarmigans, Ring Ouzel..) and Varanger (for example: Great Skua, Manx Shearwaters, Gannet colony, Guillemots, Puffins, Shore Lark, Pipits, a lot of digiscoping…) Lapland and Varanger VII
Back to normal life
From Varanger we had to come back to our normal life, boring! At least for me it was extra boring because I had to start again my work in Health Centre. And now I would have to work there the rest of the year. Hanna went again to Siikalahti and now Antti was able to have some holiday. And like normally, Antti hadn’t seen anything special while we were on our holiday, but when Antti left to Vaasa (Western Finland) Hanna found in next morning a rarity. Hanna was making duck counts when she heard a familiar voice from the reeds: 4th Savi’s Warbler in Siikalahti (in 4 years) was singing shortly.
We left the bird sing some nights, but 25th of July we asked all permits to ring the bird. Because of Siikalahti is a protected area and we have only a permit to ring night singers, we weren’t sure if we can get the permit, but we got it. After an awful wet walking in the reed wearing a rubber-trousers we luckily got the bird to the net. It didn’t mind the cassette-player at all and it also let you walk to two meters before it dropped down to the waterline hiding. But it was the rarest ringed bird for us!