November 2004
Waiting for a winter
The couple of first weeks of November I was again working in a Health Centre. The birds were gone, so there was not much sense to go birding a lot. Also Siikalahti had frozen in the last days of October.
During the 2nd day of November I did a winter bird counting in Siikalahti. I walked 15 kilometres and counted all the birds I saw or heard on the way. Only a few days earlier there had been couple of hundreds ducks with some Common Scoters, Scaups and so on, but now there was only one poor Mallard in a small area which wasn’t frozen yet. Also a family of Whooper Swans was still standing on ice in the middle of completely frozen bay. I saw an Arctic Redpoll, 3 Black Grouses and a Goshawk and I heard a Hazel Hen. I also watched to the lake Simpele which wasn’t yet frozen and I saw Common and Herring Gulls, 2 Black-headed Gulls, Goosanders and Mallards.
Rest of the month I was working with all the 25000 pictures I have taken during last 1.5 years. I was also playing rink bandy (after lazy 1.5 years) and as a coach of ice-hockey juniors.
One day I decided to go to digiscope a Hawk Owl which has been found from Simpele. It was absolutely beautiful winter morning with some -12 Celsius degrees. I was digiscoping from a small barn and the owl was very co-operative. I managed to get couple of nice shots.
On the 28th of November we went to twitch Siberian Jays with Pekka Punnonen. Pekka got a South-Karelia tick. We had to wait for the birds for an hour because there were some Jays messing around, and they are not the closest friends of Siberian cousins. After all Siberian Jays came to get their snacks. Also Willow and Crested Tits were trying to get their part of cheese and nuts.
We continued to Simpele where our best observations were Chaffinch and Brambling on Rainer Rajakallio’s feeding place. Otherwise it was pretty quiet which wasn’t promising for Independence Day bird rally which is on 6th of December.