Pine Grosbeaks

During Christmas time I visited my parents in Kajaani. There were some Pine Grosbeaks around so I tried to catch them. Wasn't very easy because there were not too many of them and most of them used to feed too high in rowant trees for my skills in using the fishing rod and loop for catching them. Well, I still managed to catch some =)

Pine Grosbeak, adult male.

Tankar 2014

I made my traditional autumn ringing trip to Tankar Bird Observatory last week with Kaisa Välimäki. We were very lucky to see some rarities and enjoy nice weather on the island in such a short time. The ringing total was 490 birds in four days and included Olive-backed Pipit, 5 Tengmalm's Owls, Jack Snipe, Yellow-browed Warbler and a Chiffchaff with characters of subspecies collybita.

During stormy days we stared at the sea and saw unbelievably many Skuas. Most of them were too distant for identifying but we managed to id 21 Pomarine Skuas safely. The number of unidentified Skuas was something like 50+. We are having a nice irruption of Pomarine Skuas here in Finland so our numbers go well with this. 2/10 we celebrated my 100th day on this island and saw a migrating Great Northern Diver! Only the second record for the island!

Thanks to Vilppu for a great company!

Olive-backed Pipit.

Chiffchaff.

Yellow-browed Warbler.

Tengmalm's Owl.

Jack Snipe.

Summer in Kainuu

Way too long from the last post. I spent the whole spring at Eilat ringing station in Israel. Like I've done last five years..This spring I was able to spend almost the whole season there. The spring wasn't very busy but still many nice species were caught. Many thanks to all the people I worked with and had great time there! Yael, Tzadok, Ron, Liri, Matt, Teresa, Bas, Mårten, Christoffer, Jesus, Melchio, Sylvia, Yosef, Yoav, Jonathan you are the best!

After coming back to Finland I soon travelled to Kajaani and started to work with Bluetails. This summer is not good for them. For an unknown reason there are clearly less than even one third of the normal number of Bluetails that arrived this spring. Normal year we have some hundreds of singing males but this summer we just passed 100 territories yesterday and the season is about to end very soon. So I haven't got more than one retrap and ringed 20+ new males. But the one control is very interesting because it is the same bird that I retrapped last summer. He spent two first summers at the same place but this year me and Teppo Helo found it from the other site that is situated 30 kms northwest from the earlier site. So he still remains the one and only Bluetail ever retrapped in European breeding sites. I still go to forests for a couple of mornings so let's see if I still manage to catch some more males.

Two adult males, caught from the same territory.

Quite a dull brownish adult male.

The only control.

A tristis-type Chiffchaff that was singing at Kajaani.

Little Bunting.

Red-breasted Flycatcher, 2cy male.

3cy Caspian Gull 19.1.2014

Yesterday Jarkko, William and me joined Pepe as he was doing his gull survey in Ämmässuo rubbish dump. There were only 1000+ Herring Gulls left because of the very cold weather we have had recently. Many gulls have left Finland but still there were enough of them to make yesterday a nice gull watching day. At one point Pepe noticed a possible Caspian Gull passing his car quickly and disappearing somewhere. Fortunately it didn't take much time to relocate the bird and take the pictures needed to confirm the id. Thanks guys for a nice birding day!

Caspian Gull, 3cy. What a "cachinnans-look".

Caspian Gull, 3cy. Nice cachinnans-underwing.

Caspian Gull, 3cy. Perfect tail and nice mirrors in outernmost primaries.

Caspian Gull, 3cy.

Caspian Gull, 3cy.

Caspian Gull, 3cy.

There was also a 2cy Glaucous Gull. This bird has quite strong markings on upperwing coverts and also some weak markings on primaries but is probably within the variation.

Christmas ringing - Purple Sandpipers.

I spent Christmas time in Jurmo Bird Observatory in southwestern Finland with William, Annika and Kajsa. Thanks to recent warm weather, there were still some Purple Sandpipers around. We ringed 23 birds with colour rings and managed to control altogether 18 different individuals by reading the rings. Two of those birds were ringed in Svalbard and four were ringed by us one year ago at the same place. The rest of the controls were ringed by Vilppu and me 1,5 months ago there.

EAM. This bird is ringed at Jurmo November 2012.

ECP. This bird is also ringed at Jurmo November 2012.

EHC. Also this bird is ringed at Jurmo November 2012.

KKC from Svalbard. This bird is ringed in Longyearbyen autumn 2010.

CHP. Also from Svalbard but I don't have the ringing data yet.

EVH. One of the birds we ringed in December 2013.

This nice 1st winter Glaucous Gull spent Christmas in Jurmo.

I also visited Kajaani quickly and did some ringing in my parent's place. Only some Tits were caught.

Willow Tit.

Crested Tit.

Jurmo B.O. 1-10.11.2013

I made a one-week trip to Jurmo Bird Observatory with Kaisa Välimäki. For us, the reason to go to this island in November is always catching Purple Sandpipers. Although the weather was not very good for this kind of activities, we managed to catch and colour ring 33 Purples. The numbers of Purples were rather low so we didn't find any controls from previous years or birds from Svalbard.

During some windless days we opened a couple of mistnets for passerines and surprisingly caught a Hume's Leaf Warbler! 2nd record for Jurmo. We've been lucky with this species as we ringed the first one also 2011. Other nice observations were 2 Black-legged Kittiwakes, Common Guillemot, many Arctic Redpolls (3 ringed), Black Redstart and a very late Redstart.

Thanks to Vilppu for help and company there!

Hume's Leaf Warbler. 2nd record for Jurmo.

1cy Purple Sandpiper yellow "ELV".

Our traps for Purples.

Tankar B.O.

I made my traditional trip to Tankar Bird Observatory island. This year I had almost all the time only storng western winds that is not very good for birds to come to this island. I ringed only 717 birds. Most of them were Long-tailed Tits and Fieldfares (there were lot of different berries on island). Goldcrests were missing completely. Now I ringed only twenty of them as normally you can have 300-500 of them in good days.

As there were not too many birds to ring, I had time to watch seabirds and check the whole island carefully almost daily. I saw some minor rarities like 3 Yellow-browed Warblers, 1 Pallas's Leaf Warbler, 2 White-billed Divers, 1 Little Auk (thanks to Toni I got a lifer!!) and 1 Great Northern Diver (a new species for the island). Most of the time I was there alone but Toni and Jürgen visited shortly to prevent me to become mad as being the only person on the whole island for days..

Hawk Owl.

Redpoll, adult female with Norwegian ring. Was ringed one year earlier close to Tromsø city.

Tengmalm's Owl.

Little Spotted Woodpecker, 1cy male.

Two-barred Crossbill, 1cy male.

Siberian Chiffchaff, 1cy.

Hawk Owl, secondaries of 1cy.

Hawk Owl, rectrices of 1cy.

Hawk Owl, secondaries of adult.

Hawk Owl, rectrices of adult.

Respect.

Red-throated Pipits!

Have been ringing in Espoo Laajalahti every now and then during last weeks. Mostly I have done evening ringing with William and Jarkko and we have caught some nice numbers of Yellow Wagtails and still many Acrocephalus warblers. Last week I tried for Red-throated Pipits as they have been flying over the reeds earlier while we were catching Yellow Wags. It's quite rare to catch RT Pipit in Finland but this time I was lucky to catch 5 young birds.

I have visited Ämmässuo rubbish dump weekly but didn't have luck to find any nice gulls. Below photos of an interesting Herring Gull from last week with very strange bill for 1cy. There are also some other weird things in this gull but probably it just presents some very odd variation of Herring Gull and no hybridisation.

Red-throated Pipit, 1cy.

Red-throated Pipits.

1cy Herring (?) Gull.

1cy Herring (?) Gull.

1cy Herring (?) Gull.

Xema!

Two days ago somebody found a beautiful summer-plumaged adult Sabine's Gull in Lempäälä. The bird disappeared quickly but was found 4 hours later from Vesilahti. Tomppa picked up Jari, Jarkko, Jenni and me and we drove those 170 kms just in time to witness this bird to take off from the lake and to circle a couple of minutes above us and to disappear to south. We were lucky to arrive in time because this bird was never relocated again. It's 14th record for Finland.

Sabine's Gull, adult. (c) Tom Nordblad

Estonian Bird Race 2013

Last weekend I went to Estonia with Jarkko Santaharju, Petteri Mäkelä and Teppo Lehtola. We participated in Estonian Bird Race that took place this year in two quite eastern provinces of Estonia (Jögevamaa and Tartumaa). We hardly knew any birding sites from there and none of us had ever visited this part of the country but still we managed to do it quite well. We had extremely nice birding day that included some nice species as Lesser Spotted Eagles, Middle Spotted Woodpeckers, Black Terns, lot of Nuthatches and Marsh Tits.. All nice species that are hard or even impossible to see in Finland. We also saw one Two-barred Crossbill that was maybe the rarest bird of the whole race. Altogether we found 131 species during 14 hours. Thanks to Jarkko, Petteri and Teppo for nice birding!

More photos from Petteri's blog.

Lake Peipus at the sunrise.

The final results.