June 2003
June – Work, rally and some twitching
June seemed to go very fast, we had so much work to do! Counts and guiding took so much time that we couldn’t do any real night singer trips. So the best night singer areas weren’t checked at all this year. That’s a pity because in neighbour counts our friends made good job. But of course we twitched birds that our friends found: from Saari a Quail and from Rautjärvi Änkilä a Booted Warbler. In the beginning of month we heard still Baillion’s Crake few times while making counts in Siikalahti. But the bird was in too difficult place that to arrange any twitchings any more.
6th and 7th of June we had Siikalahti bird rally. The rally wasn’t that big that we had hoped, we had less than ten teams, but of course the competition was very exciting and good! At least the best teams were really good ones, our team Me, Hanna and Harry Nyströn from Lappeenranta of course one of the best teams. Rally area was whole South-Karelia, so Harry gave us good extra species from South. Rally started at 9 to 10 p.m. and it was raining really hard then. We decided to try something crazy, we went to forest because we couldn’t do anything wiser in that weather. Driving in deep forests at night wasn’t very bad idea at all: we got Red-throated Diver, Mistle Trush, Sparrowhawk… At night we found all night singers very easily (of course, we know that well night singers in Siikalahti area). So we heard several Nightjars, Spotted Crakes, Water Rails, a lot of Thrush Nightingales and Blyth’s Reed Warblers and some Grasshopper and River Warblers. But close to the Russian border we heard also three Owl species: Ural/Eagle Owl, Tawny and Tengmalm’s Owl. At mourning we visited Siikalahti pretty quickly, we knew the birds there so well that we didn’t need a lot time there: Little Crake, Great Reed and Reed Warbler, Garganey, Smew, Golden Oriol, Icterine Warbler… and one surprise White-tailed Eagle. After Siikalahti we started to move more South. On the way we got some more species (for example Hawfinch from Imatra), but in Joutseno we made out first good stop. Konnunsuo area gave us Ortolan Bunting, Ringed Plover and a twitched Booted Warbler. In Lappeenranta we made some good stops and the best species were Long-tailed Tit, Red-breasted Flycatcher and Red-necked Phalarope. But we checked the places very fast so we decided to leave back to North because there was still some species lacking. And that was good idea: in last hour we got still five more species and finally we came second in whole rally. Jari Kontiokorpi and Jussi Valonen were done so much work for the rally so they got two more species. But after all we had amazing good rally!
After rally we were relaxing two rainy days in my grandmother’s cottage in Ristiina with my brother’s family. Luckily we saw one Eagle Owl on the way and after 10 minutes on the beach of big Saimaa Lake I saw a migrating Pomarine Skua! I took also some photos, but it was too rainy to get good ones.
12th of June we (with Antti) twitched a Barred Warbler from Joutseno Konnunsuo. The bird was very difficult to digiscope! It was jumping a lot, and we could see it well for several times but always when I focused it was behind a leaf or something. Next two weeks went doing counts. We had duck-, mapping- and night singer counts. Somehow there were much less almost all birds than in normal year.
In mid June came some friends of mine (Tuomo Jaakkonen, Jarno Saarinen and Mikko Ala-Kojola) from Oulu to find some night singers. And like always Tuomo wanted to do some ringing too. First we caught Blyth’s Reed Warbler, then Corn Crake and after that very good ringing tick a Quail from Saari Jyrkilä fields! 24th day we twitched Yellow Serin from Kuopio (actually I went there by train, Mikko was already there and Antti came from Vaasa and we all came after twitching to Parikkala with Antti). Yellow Serin was a lifer number 321 for me (it really is rare in Finland!)
Last counts we made in tight schedule! We were all three working almost around the clock! Reason was that we had friends coming to have some birding with us from Barcelona! Our old friend Oriol Clarabuch came with his friend Toni Alonso to have birding in two weeks in Eastern Finland with us. Eastern Finland VI-VII (The whole trip, already in June Booted Warbler, Blyth`s Reed and River Warbler ringing, Lanceolated Warbler, Great Grey Owl, Ural Owl, Greenish Warblers, Red-breasted Flycatchers…)
