Stone Curlew
During the hottest July I wasn’t birding very much. Actually the only better bird-observation was made by accident while we were having cold beer with my floorball team-mates in local railway station restaurant’s beer garden: our goal-tender asked me: “What is that raptor over there?” and it was a Black Kite! The kite was soaring over us for some minutes. I think it was searching for food from the rails.
On the 27th of July I had been once again first running and then in gym and when I finally got back to my car I read the meassage from my phone that my friend Jarmo Pirhonen had found a Stone Curlew from Lappeenranta Joutseno Konnunsuo. Again a rare bird in Konnunsuo! I didn’t leave immediately but after some thinking I decided to go. I had seen only one Stone Curlew in Finland before and this bird seemed to be pretty close to the bird-tower so I hoped to get some pictures.
After an hour driving I was there in Konnunsuo and the bird was soon pointed me from the field. Unfortunately it was now pretty far so the pictures I took weren’t very good. Anyway it was nice to see a Stone Curlew walking actively on the open field. Pretty soon it walked to deeper and longer vegetation and disappeared. Of course there were more twitchers coming all the time so we waited desperately it to show up again. But surprisingly it wasn’t found before Karri Kuitunen saw it landing with a flock of Lapwings to another field about 1 km from us! So we drove there and now all managed to see it. Soon it was flushed by a rider and it left far south with Lapwings. It seemed to land somewhere maybe 1.5 kilometres from us but unfortunately it wasn’t found again.
On the 28th of July I woke up so that already at 5 a.m. I was watching migration in Härskiinmutka. But nothing was migrating over Lake Simpele so pretty soon I continued to Siikalahti, but it was absolutely quiet also there!
The best observation of the day was a “Catocala adultera” emperor moth that tryed to get inside our apartment first through the window when a Fieldfare that was chasing it hit to the window and died and then later it tried to get inside through the door but the mosquito net didn’t let us come. Unfortunately this beautiful moth never landed and disappeared soon.
J.A.