Weekend in Hanko Vedagrundet
On Friday the 17th of July I started driving south and stopped in Lappeenranta Askola where I saw a Little Ringed Plover, 5 Dunlins, 2 Temminck Stints and a Caspian Tern that had been there already on the previous day. I picked up Pekka Punnonen and soon we continued towards Hanko. We had planned to go to seawatch for the weekend and hoped to see a Sandwich Tern as a Finnish-tick as there had been a couple of them on last 2 days and 1 also in this day.
But it was a long drive and we were in Hanko after 7 p.m. and first we drove to Tallholmarna but saw nothing special, just Cormorants, Mute Swans and Eiders which of course were special birds for us inland-birders.
Then we drove to Vedagrundet and started seawatching. We checked every tern and also scanned the sea and all the islands, islets and rocks. 3 Caspian Terns were fishing nearby and a Little Ringed Plover and a couple of Dunlins were found before I noticed a reddish wafer 1 kilometer away on a small rock. It had pale head and strange white streak on its side. I immediately thought it was a Red Phalarope but I needed to check the book as I didn’t remember any streak on its plumage. But it had exactly similar stripe on the book so I sent the news out. Pretty soon there were the first twitchers and even though the bird was pretty mobile and times to times went to the other side of the rocks we managed to keep it visible until 11 p.m. when the last twitchers arrived from Helsinki!
On the 18th of July we tried to sleep in my car but we woke up a couple of times as there were new twitchers coming and we heard a Spotted Crake and saw a Nightjar in a parking place. At 4 a.m. we walked to the shore and soon the Red Phalarope was found again but this time it was much closer, about 250 meters from us. It soon flew to another small island and stayed pretty much on the other side of the island but anyway every twitcher managed to see it even though it took even 4 hours for a couple of them as they were moving to Högholmen when someone saw it from there and again back when we saw it and they were always in wrong place.
We of course tried to seawatch and checked all the terns and every single place that was visible and saw 2 Broad-billed Sandpipers, 6 Arctic Skuas, 6 Caspian Terns, 2 Whimbrels, 8 Dunlins, 15 Black Guillemots, heard 4 young Wrynecks and a singing Greenish Warbler and saw a Parrot Crossbill. I also saw a flock of 5 Razorbills. But we didn’t see any Sandwich Terns even though one group of birders told later that they had seen one! And we were only 30 meters from them!
In the afternoon it started to rain and we went to eat to the city. We managed to get the last room from Silverstrand camping and went to sleep soon.
On the 19th we were out again at 4 a.m. and after visiting Långören, we were soon in Vedagrundet again. There were no other birders as the last twitchers of the previous evening hadn’t seen the Red Phalarope anymore. But after an hour we found the bird again from the ordinary rock 1 kilometer away. It was windier and the bird stayed long times behind the rock, but soon there were more and more twitchers again and everyone saw the bird.
Other birds we saw until 1:30 p.m. were 4 Pintails, 2 Long-tailed Ducks, 2 Velvet Scoters, a Red-throated and a Black-throated Diver, 6 Grey Plovers, 1+26 Bar-tailed Godwits, 8 Whimbrels, 8 Arctic Skuas, 4 Caspian Terns, 10 Black Guillemots and 4 young Wrynecks were still calling around us. I also saw a Turnstone and a Razorbill and there was a Knot and a Little Stint on the beach. But we didn’t see any Sandwich Terns. Together with Andreas Lindén we still stopped in Svanvik and then in Kirkkonummi Saltfjärden where we saw 600 Swifts and 2 Spotted Redshanks. Then with Pekka we still stopped in Espoo Finno where we saw 6 Moorhens and 80 Gadwalls. On the way towards Lappeenranta, we still stopped in Pyhtää Lökören, where we twitched 2 male and a female Red-crested Pochards. We still stopped in Lappeenranta Askola where we saw 4 Curlew Sandpipers, a Grey Heron and so on. After I had dropped Pekka, I still had a tired drive to Parikkala where I still saw the 25th wader-species of the trip – a Woodcock.
J.A.