End of summer
I wasn’t birding much in August. The weather was still nice and warm so it was nice to do long biking trips. Many birds disappeared early – early spring and good summer had made it possible to breed early and successfully start autumn migration earlier than normally.
Some better birds I saw or heard on the beginning of august were a calling Wryneck in the 2nd of August, altogether 4 Nutcrackers that stayed near railway-station and a family of Barnacle Geese that were feeding on the grass on the swimming-beach.
On the 9th day I drove to south and visited Espoo Laajalahti where I saw 11 Dunlins, 3 Temminck Stints, a Little Stint, 2 Curlew Sandpipers, some other common waders, lots of ducks and 25 Caspian Terns. 10th of August we went to watch Super-Match Manchester City vs. Arsenal with my friends. It was the last preparing match before the Premier League. The game was in Helsinki Olympic Stadium which was sold out – there were more than 41 000 people. Then on the 11th day I visited Laajalahti again and saw some of the same birds than a couple of days earlier, 6 Little Stints and also a White-fronted Goose.
On the 14th of August I saw 2 Little Stints and 2 Temminck Stints in Saari Pohjanranta – I hadn’t seen any stints in Parikkala for a couple of years. But even better were 3 Arctic Skuas that migrated over me there. Then on the next day I saw a Temminck Stint and a Ringed plover there.
On the 21st of August it started to feel more like autumn. I saw a flock 13 Golden Plovers migrating in Siikalahti and already 250 Cranes were in a flock in Joutseno Kivisaari. On the 23rd day we went to Saari with Harri Partanen but didn’t see anything special: 160 Cranes, 5 Hen Harriers, quite a few Whinchats, a Grey Heron and so on.
During the weekend Hanna participated to BirdLife Finland meeting in Helsinki and she managed to get a butterfly-lifer – a Yellow-legger Tortoiseshell.
On the 25th day I twitched 2 Nuthatches in Likolampi. There were again altogether 4 birds visiting the feeders. They hadn’t been seen almost for a year after visiting the feeders for several years all around the year. On the same day I saw a Goldfinch and 2 Long-tailed Tits on my biking trip and 9 Taiga Bean Geese and 2 Smews in Siikalahti, where I still saw 2 young Slavonian Grebes on the next day.
On the 27th day I went to walk to Kullinsuo fields where I saw a Hen Harrier, 5 Red-throated Pipits, a Lesser Whitethroat and so on but only 2 Snipes and no Great Snipes that I had hoped to find. I did the same walk in the 29th day but then I saw only 2 Curlews, a Red-throated Pipit and a Snipe.
On the 1st of September I participated to Tour de Helsinki -biking competition together with my friend Juha Honkanen. It took 4 and half hours to bike 140 kilometers. The first half it was raining very hard but luckily it stopped. It was really fun and we weren’t really tired at all after that.
J.A.