The warm spring continues
The April started warm and a good selection of birds had arrived already. On the 1st day I birded with Miika Suojarinne and in Saari we saw 2 Stock Doves, Canada Geese, Wigeons, Wagtails, a Crane and a Pheasant. In Siikalahti we saw 30 Bean and 2 White-fronted Geese, Wigeons, Teals, 2 Black-headed Gulls and so on. Bitterns were already calling. In Punkaharju Lusto we ticked a Nutcracker.
On the 3rd I saw the next year-tick when a Lesser Black-backed Gull flew over me in Siikalahti. It was a pale-backed race – whatever heuglini/graelssii/intermedius? We spent the Eastern in Sotkamo by skiing and relaxing with my parents and brothers families. It was till winter in Sotkamo and luckily on those days it was a back-winter everywhere in Finland so I didn’t miss anything. On the way back home on 9th day we found a Wood Lark in Sotkamo Leväjoki and I could finally try my new microphone and minidisk-player and try recording its beautiful song. Unfortunately the traffic was very heavy so the recording wasn’t very good, but at least something.
On the 10th day I saw the first Curlew and a couple of migrating Stock Doves in Siikalahti. On 12th day we had a meeting of our local bird association EKLY again and on the wasy to Lappeenranta I twitched a Mute Swan in river Vuoksi. In Joutseno Konnunsuo we saw 500 Bean, 150 White-fronted and 2 Pink-footed Geese and in Lappeenranta Rasala 300 Bean Geese more.
On 13th day I saw the first Osprey and Bewick’s Swan and on the next day I did the duck-counts in Siikalahti: for example 35/6 Pochards, 55/49 Goldeneyes, 9/5 Smews, a couple of Pintails, 103 Mallards, 81 Coots and so on. 14 Rough-legged Buzzards were migrating in an hour but soon all the migrations stopped – 5 Rooks, a Wren singing, a Golden Plover and then the best observation of the day – a Great Black-backed Gull.
On the 15th day I saw 4 Shovelers, a Black-throated Diver and a Green Sandpiper. Already 350 Black-headed Gulls had arrived and the visit to Saari was as meaningless as usually. On the next morning a Chiffchaff was singing on the health centre and in the evening we started our way to Kirkkonummi. Hanna had BirdLife Finland meeting in Helsinki and I was going to Spain Andalucia to 1st professional meeting of bird tourism in El Rocio Donaña.
To Andalucia Spain
On the 17th of April I flew first from Helsinki to Stockholm, then to Madrid where I was too late and missed my plane so I had to wait a couple of extra hours for the next flight to Sevilla. Finally I was in Sevilla after 14 hours travelling and there I had a driver waiting for me and I still had an hour drive to Rocio.
Finally I was in Rocio at 00.30 a.m. and I had a room in a beautiful hotel Toruño. After an hour I was finally able to go to sleep.
Birding!
I woke up after 4 hours sleep but it was still dark outside, so I waited for an hour and went to birding. Only aboyt 30 meters from the hotel was a big water area with marshes – the biggest Nature reserve in Europe, Donaña.
When the sun started to rise I could find many birds: Flamingos, Spoonbills, Moorhens, Black-winged Stilts, Black Kites, 2 Red Kites, Gold Finches, Great Reed and Reed Warblers were singing. Trees were full of Swallows, some Cetti’s Warblers were singing and Spotless Starlings were everywhere!
I walked for a hundred of metres more to a roof of an old building where I could see the whole water area better: Red-crested Pochards, Gadwalls, a couple of Greylag Geese (yes, they were also flying), Grey Herons, lots of White Storks in the fields with horses and much more – what a beautiful wake up!
The driver I had at night had told me that I wasn’t expected to join the experts meeting in the morning so I decided to keep on birding until the afternoon. I walked for a couple of kilometres to the other side of the water where was a 3,5 kilometres long patch and several birdhides.
Already on the way I saw and heard several Nightingales, Collared Pratincoles, Yellow Wagtails, Crested Larks, Savi’s Warblers, Night Herons, Cattle Egrets, Squacco Herons, a Pied Flycatcher, Serins and a Subalpine Warbler. I didn’t see anything really special (a Yellow-legged Gull and some Whiskered Terns and Gull-billed Terns and so on) from the hides but on the way through the pine-forests I saw many Chaffinches, a Wren, Long-tailed Tits, a couple of Cuckoos, a displaying Black-shouldered Kite, a Sardinian Warbler, 2 Stonechats, some Short-toed Larks and Melodious Warblers.
After several hours birding I walked back to the hotel where I got a message that I had been waited in a meeting! Well, anyway I thought after some experience about birding places I could have something more to say how the things should be there! So I promised to write down something later.
In the afternoon I joined the experts and we had a trip inside the Natural Park to eat and do birding. I was in a car with 4 British birders (Keith Betton, Tim Stapleton, Michael Witherick and Carol Depney) and once we had finally had something to eat we had really good birding together! Already from the lunch-table we could watch a nest of a Spanish Imperial Eagle with the telescopes. Unfortunately the mother was just lying down in the nest so nothing really was seen. But finally the father came and flew directly over us and we had good views of his extremely rare bird!
Once we had eaten we continued to marshes and drier areas where we could find for example Griffon’s Vultures, Black Kites, Booted Eagles, Bushchat Shrikes, Whiskered and Black Terns, Glossy Ibises, Red-legged Partridges, Calandra Larks, some Little Owls and Great Spotted Cuckoos, Black-tailed Godwits, Garganeys and in one place we could find 2 male White-headed Ducks with Coots, Black-necked, Little and Great Crested Grebes and Gadwalls.
A little bit later we stopped in a place where was a huge colony of Glossy Ibises, Cattle Egrets, Little Egrets, Squacco Herons, Night Herons and Purple Herons. Also some Great White Egrets were seen. Amazing! Also Golden Plovers, a Dunlin, Zitting Cisticolas, a Quail and surprisingly 7 Pin-tailed Sandgrouses were seen – the second lifer to me!
Later in the evening we still tried to find an Iberian Lynx but we saw only its food – Rabbits. The dinner was very Spanish – it started really late and lasted long! All the participants had now arrived so it was really nice to meet new people around the Europe and U.S. So after all I managed to go to sleep very late .
The Fair day
On the 19th day was the Fair day. I slept until 8 a.m. and then after less than an hour we wet to a camping area where the fair were. Most of the participants were staying there too. I met the British birders again and hey told that they had planned to go birding again in the afternoon with a guide and they asked me to join them.
The place was a bit too small and noisy for the fair but there were many interesting stands so I gad lots to do. After a couple of hours I noticed that the British had left already, so I had to keep on.
In the afternoon after a long lunch we went to a bird trip with all the rest of the participants and unfortunately the destinations were exactly the same I had been a day before. The Spanish Imperial Eagle and this time 3 male White-headed Ducks were seen again and many other same birds too. Some new ones were Kentish Plovers and Montagu’s Harriers. It was funny to see that most of the participants didn’t know the birds well so I was guiding all the time.
In the late afternoon we tried again to find an Iberian Lynx and we managed to see it but too briefly – I can’t be sure what it was but 2 girls were sure it was a Lynx.
Birdrace!
On the next morning all the expert birders were joining the first ever bird race in Andalucia! I was with a Welshman Gerry Thomas and 2 British Barry Trevis and Rebecca Nason. We had also a driver and a translator because of the driver wh was the number one guide of the reserve couldn’t speak English. At 6.15 a.m. I was picked up from the hotel and soon I met the rest of my team in a small cafeteria from were we started the rally at 8 a.m. There were altogether 5 teams: British, Swedish, Dutch and locals with an American.
So we started from the cafeteria and we had planned to go to the hotel to see all the common species and some warblers I had seen there earlier, but the driver waned to do something else. And because of we knew he was the best guide of the area we decided to go wherever he wanted. So we went to the last place I wanted – to see the Spanish Imperial Eagle. Of course the eagle was good to see but we lost several hours in the best time in the morning in a place where weren’t too many birds at all. So we had to work hard with the common species too!
Anyway in the beginning we got some other good species too: Wood Lark, Red-legged Partridges, Black Stork, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Cuckoo, Turtle Dove, Azure-winged Magpie and so on. There were 10 species that all teams had to see, and I think our driver had understood something wrong and he wanted to get these species as quickly as possible. But I think we would have got 60 species in an hour from the hotel-area and now we spent 3 hours to get them. And of course because of this was already third time for me in these places most of the birds were the same again. But a Peregrine was a nice surprise.
The weather was cool and it was also raining a little. This was a good thing for us because of now we still had a possibility to find warblers. In a hot day they just disappear. So a Blackcap, Garden Warblers and Chiffchaffs were found easily once we stopped the first tie to check some trees.
Mostly we were just driving around the long sandy track around the Nature reserve and we stopped only when there were really lots of birds. The best stop was worthy of: Ringed Plovers, Little Stints, Curlew Sandpiper, Dunlin, Montagu’s, Hen and Marsh Harriers, Yellow-legged Gull, Shovelers, Garganeys, Calandra and Short-toed Larks, Subalpine Warbler and so on.
Near the colony we saw of course all the Egrets and so on but also a Purple Swamphen, Avocet, another Black Stork, 2 Red-rumped Swallows and a little bit later a bigger surprise a Bonelli’s Eagle.
The next hour was bad but we had already got a hundred species so everything seemed to go well. But if comparing to the first day when I was birding – I got then 106 species alone!
But finally we got a reason to be happy again when after a long searching we found a Crested Coot! In same place we saw some White-headed Ducks too. But I think we lost a lot of time again…
We still were lacking some ridiculous species but still we tried to see some good ones first. We had no luck with Stone Curlew, but a Northern Wheatear, Black-shouldered Kite and Spanish Sparrows were good ones. The last hour we tried to find some easy species and we still got a Blue Tit, Sardinian Warbler and on the way back to the meeting place we still found a Southern Grey Shrike! It was our 113th species in 6 hours rally.
After all, the rally was very successful. It wasn’t a surprise to me that we won the rally. It was much bigger surprise to my team-mates. The Swedish team had 111 and another British team 104 species.
In the afternoon I had an hour time to walk around the Rocio village. The village is very strange with all sandy roads and horses everywhere. All shops I found were flamenco-shops, but that was all I needed to get souvenirs for Hanna.
In the evening we had a horse-ride around the village and after the dinner a flamenco-show. We had really fun and I could have kept on talking with al the people for many hours but I had to go to sleep at 2 a.m. because of after 2 hours I had only 2 hours time to sleep!
Back to home
At 4.14 a.m. I was on my way to Sevilla airport. My flight to Madrid was at 6.35 and after to Stockholm (late again – no points to Iberia in this trip) at 11.15 a.m.
In Stockholm I spent again a couple of hours and bought the most expensive coke and sandwich ever – 11.60€. Finally my Finnair plane to Helsinki left at 6.10 p.m. It was good to be in Finnair – everything was so much better than on Iberia! Finally I was in Helsinki where my brother picked me up and we drove to Kirkkonummi to my parents.
On 22nd day I started my way back home early and I did some birding on the way. In Espoo Suomenoja I saw 24 Slavonian Grebes, 18 Gadwalls, 4 Moorhens and 3 Eiders, in Laajalahti I saw 2 Ruffs, several Redshanks and Greenshanks, a Ringed Plover, 2 Oystercatchers and a Water Rail was calling. In Viikki I birded with Kristjan Niitepöld and we saw a Little Grebe, a Common Tern, a Caspian Tern, a Little Ringed Plover, a Haw Finch and 2 Bearded Tits. Then I got a message that there was a Griffon’s Vulture coming towards Helsinki so we drove to Vantaa Westergulla to wait for it, but unfortunately soon we heard that it had flown 20 kilometres more North from Kerava. So I decided to drive home because I had still a long way.
On the next day we managed to twitch a 2nd cy Pallid Harrier in Kanavalampi. We also checked all the owl nest boxes in Saari. Then we continued to Melkoniemi where we also checked a couple of nest boxes and finally we were lucky. In 5 minutes we saw a Pink-footed Goose, a Capercaillie and then in a Ural Owl nest box there was a female incubating! We ringed this bird and we know next time we’ll see that bird it won’t be that easy anymore!
On the next 2 days I twitched 6 Shore Larks in Kanavalampi and a Black Redstart in Imatra Kupari. The other yearticks were a Red-throated Diver, a Wheatear and a Spotted Crake. I also checked many nest boxes but they were all empty. It seems that we’ll have another bad owl year!
On the 28th of April i was watching migration in Siikalahti. The day was cold and the wind was northern but anyway I saw 200 Bean Geese, 2 Pink-footed Geese, 20 White-fronted Geese, 2 White-tailed Eagles, 2 Hen Harriers, a male Peregrine, Greenshanks, Green Sandpipers, 52 Little Gulls, 4 House Martins, a Chiffchaff and a Lapland Bunting. In the evening we checked 14 nest boxes but nothing! Anyway we saw briefly 2 big owls, either Ural or Great Grey Owls.
On the 29th day I saw Wood Sandpipers, Tree Pipits, Whimbrels, Pied Flycatchers and a Swallow as year ticks. But again came a back-winter and on the morning of the last day of April there was snow on the ground!
