Winter is coming…
Autumn started really and finally the wind changed and arctic migration started – but I was at work and during my lunch-hours I didn’t see much. On the 5th of October there were couple of Pink-footed Geese again in Siikalahti. On the 6th day the Bar-headed Goose was still in Kullinsuo and a couple of late Dunlins in Pohjanranta and Bewick’s Swans were here and there.
On the 8th of October when the weather was stormy. But finally the wind was from almost right direction, so we had to go birding. After the rain stopped we headed to Savonlinna Punkaharju Punkasalmi where Veikka Kosonen and Elissa Soikkeli also soon arrived. We stayed there from 8 a.m. to 12 o’clock when the migration was over. We saw altogether almost 40 000 migrating geese but they all were very distant so most of them were unidentified. Ducks were migrating straight over us but the wind was so hard that even they were difficult to identify. The wind was so strong that Hanna’s telescope fell done once but luckily Zeiss is tough!
The best birds of the morning were both adult Pomarine Skuas. There is a slight possibility that it was the same bird twice but at least the second bird was so clearly on migration that we decided that they were different birds.
Once the migration stopped we continued to Saari where in Pohjanranta we still saw an adult and a young Dunlins but otherwise we didn’t see much.
On the 10th of October I saw a Gadwall and a couple of Scaups in Siikalahti and from 12th day there was a tame Great Egret in Särkisalmi. It was perching on docks and walking on the grass there.
At the weekend the trips were made to Saari again but on the 14th day there was only a Great Egret and a Grey-headed Woodpecker in Pohjanranta and a Brent Goose in Jyrkilä and on the 15th day a Merlin and a Common Kestrel in Karinmäki.
On the 16th of October there were 3 Gadwalls and 3 Scaups in Siikalahti with other ducks but during the rest of the week the weather was so cold and bad that I didn’t do much birding. And again it started to be so dark after work that there wasn’t much time either…
J.A.