October 2003
October – Waiting for arctica and finally I missed it
In the beginning of October all eastern Finland’s birders were waiting the beginning of arctic migration. But too long Southern winds kept the birds still at North, and only small amounts of birds were seen. Birders begun to get nervous and thoughts that the birds had already went somehow were getting bigger.
I could do migration watching only at weekends, so most of the time I was holding my thumbs up that I wouldn’t miss the migration. But the weather stayed as bad in weekends, so we had to keep waiting and hoping again.
I managed to have only some more interesting times in the beginning of month. At Friday 3rd of October after work I went to Punkaharju Hirvikoski and I saw 1540 Long-tailed Ducks and first flock of Barnacle Geese migrating in one and half hour. Next day in same place I saw 326 Divers (mostly Black-throated but also Red-throated), 1418 Barnacles and first Brent Geese, 1368 other geese, 1025 Long-tailed Ducks, 35 Velvet Scoters, Cormorant, Smew, White-backed Woodpecker and first 60 Waxwings. Both days my old friend Saimaa Seal came to see me again. Once it had a friend also and they were swimming very close to each other – nice!
5th at Sunday we spent time with Hanna at Punkaharju Punkasalmi. Even we had to stop birding at midday because Hanna’s grandmothers 90- years birthdays, we saw some migration again. 2647 Long-tailed Ducks, 30 Scaups, about thousand geese with first White-fronted Geese. At birthday parties we saw also one good species: I whistled a little for Black Woodpecker which was shouting in the forest, it wasn’t interested, but Grey-headed Woodpecker came to watch who is whistling?
At the evening it happened. I got the message that in Kitee 60 kilometres north was a Red-breasted Goose in a flock of 900 Barnacles! And of course it was a Sunday night and too late! At Monday I was very nervous at work and finally I managed to leave to Kitee little earlier with two twitchers from Helsinki. And the goose was still there when we got there. It was feeding and sleeping in the middle of a flock, and it was very difficult to see. But I managed to get some photographs of it. But two days later everything changed black! Some birders managed to see that the bird had a red ring on its leg, so might not be a countable bird at all.
10th of October after work I went by bike to Siikalahti. A flock of 12 Bewick’s Swans flew over me, 16009 geese were migrating (mostly Anser-geese). On the bay there was more than thousand ducks swimming, just Wigeons were 650 and 250 more migrating. Other nice local birds were Long-tailed Duck, Scaup, Dunlin, Great-Grey Shrike, White-backed Woodpecker and Swallow.
11th day we went with Hanna and Ilkka Jarva to Joutseno Jalkasaari to see some arctic migration. The birds were seen very nicely there but there wasn’t enough migration. On the way back we visited Konnunsuo fields but it started to rain hard.
13th day it really started! The geese migration was extremely hard! At North Karelia birders could count more than a 100000 geese in best places! And I was working! After work I went to Parikkala beach, where was some migration, but the migration route was more North. And because I don’t have a car I had to just keep watching there. In that one hour that I stayed there I saw 6445 Barnacle Geese. But I was of course pretty pissed of!
We still kept trying to catch some small owls at weekend nights in Tarvaslampi and we managed to catch some Pygmy Owls and 2 Tengmalm’s Owls. Another of latter was our own ringed bird so it must be a local one.
24th day after work we made a little trip close Hanna’s parent home. Surprisingly we found pretty much local birds from the nearest bay. 65 Smews, Mute Swan, 60 Redpolls with 2 Arctic Redpolls and one “Little Redpoll” and also nice old White-tailed Eagle flew over us.
25th day came a winter! It was snowing very hard and it was impossible to have any birding. So we kept on planning the next day’s bird trip. At Tarvaslampi we saw a familiar Grey-headed Woodpecker, which come every winter to feeding place. It was eating apples straight from the tree.
South-Karelia familiar while twitching
At Sunday 26th of October we went to do some twitching to the southern parts of South Karelia. At early morning we were already watching and photographing a nice Short-toed Lark at Ylämaa Nutikka. The bird was pretty poor looking because it was snowy and minus degrees. It couldn’t get much to eat because all the seeds were frozen. We had some worms for it but it wasn’t interested of those. It was easy to digiscpe the bird because it wasn’t afraid of us at all, but the weather was cloudy and it was snowing so the light wasn’t very good.
At Savitaipale we twitched Marsh Tit. We found the bird pretty easily by using the CD-player. The bird came pretty easily but disappeared again. It seemed to move in big area. So it wasn’t easy bird at all. So I couldn’t get any pictures of this rarity at all. At same garden there was also a Pygmy Owl which was a little more co-operative. Later we drove back to Parikkala through Taipalsaari and Konnunsuo fields, but it was snowing again so there was not a much sense to continue birding.
In the last days it started to rain again, so snow melted and it came again dark and wet. Most migration birds have already left to South, so let’s see if there can still find something to photograph in November. Most of my time I am planning our coming trips to far south – but I’ll tell later where 