National Backyard Twitching Weekend

During this weekend we had "Pihabongaus" event in Finland. Pihabongaus could be translated as Backyard Twitching. The organizer of the event is Birdlife Finland and it has a very powerful patron; Tarja Halonen, the President of Finland.

The event is open for everyone and all one needs to do is to spend one hour in own backyard, some park or other small area. Pihabongaus is not a competition, so the observed number of birds is not decisive. Main purpose is to alert the public to observe the winter bird feeders and backyard birds and also the neighbouring nature. At the same time Birdlife Finland gets valuable information on the winter bird life of our country.

During 2009 in this same event total of 15 000 people observed birds in 10 000 backyards. I could bet that this year we get even more participants. 


Personally I participated in Pihabongaus for the 5th time. First in Saturday with Roni and today with Petro. On Saturday we saw 13 species, today 10 and in total 14. Nothing special, just the ordinary suburb winter birds. We could have seen some more also today, but our local newspaper Valkeakosken Sanomat wanted to interview us. The article should be in newspaper tomorrow.

The comple lists from both is below:

Saturday 30th of January:


1. Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix) 8
2. European Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris)  45
3. Great Tit (Parus major) 35
4. European Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) 50
5. Coal Tit (Periparus ater) 1
6. Common Magpie (Pica pica) 7
7. House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) 14
8. Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) 2
9. Eurasian Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) 2
10. Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) 1
11. Eurasian Siskin (Carduelis spinus) 1
12. Common Redpoll (Carduelis flammea) 20
13. Common Blackbird (Turdus merula) 1

Sunday 31st of January:

1. Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix) 9
2. European Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris)  45
3. Great Tit (Parus major) 15
4. European Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) 30
5. Common Magpie (Pica pica) 5
6. House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) 19
7. Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) 4
8. Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) 2
9. Common Blackbird (Turdus merula) 1
10. Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) 1