Garden Twitch and twitching in Kymenlaakso
On Saturday the 24th of January we woke up early and soon walked to the best feeder of the village to Garden Twitch. We stayed in the end of Yläkuja from the sunrise until about 40 minutes and counted all birds. We saw altogether 70 Waxwings, 2 Blackbirds, 165 Fieldfares (135 of them were migrating over us), a Coal Tit, 6 Blue Tits, 15 Great Tits, 3 Magpies, 15 Jackdaws, 2 Hooded Crows, 3 Starlings, 20 Tree Sparrows, 20 Green Finches, 25 Gold Finches, 10 Bull Finches, a Haw Finch and 14 Yellowhammers.
After the Garden Twitch I started to dive towards south and stopped in Kokkolanjoki to see a Dipper and in Vuoksi to see a Cormorant. Then I stopped in Lappeenranta Joutseno Haukilahti where I twitched a Mistle Thrush. During the day I had rink-bandy and bandy matches.
Next morning we left early towards Kymenlaakso with Pekka Punnonen. We twitched the Eagle Owl on the way again and then drove straight to Hamina Ruotsinkylä. there we walked around the streets and got familiar to the place and saw lots of Blackbirds, Fieldfares and Waxwings but not the Black-throated Thrush that had been there for a couple of days. More twitchers arrived and we spread around to search a bigger area. I saw 2 Pheasants, 2 Bramblings, a Mistle Thrush and a Song Thrush before someone finally found the Black-throated Thrush. It stayed in one garden so we managed to see it pretty well and even though I didn’t have my scope, I managed to see that it had some red on its tail – but I remembered that it is ok for the species. Only later I and other birders saw some pictures of the bird with spread tail and discussion started that it is probably a hybrid between Black-throated and Red-throated Thrush.
We continued to Kotka Laajakoski and there we managed to twitch a Marsh Tit that had stayed on a feeder from late autumn. It took only a couple of minutes and we were again driving towards Lappeenranta. We were in Lappeenranta at 1 p.m. and I went to see bandy match Finland-Kazakhstan which was before my own match.
J.A.