Phonescoped Eurasian Pygmy Owl

Short birding trip today in Ikaalinen with my older son Petro. When we came back from the Kurinlahti observation tower, this sympathic individual waited us near the trail. It's always nice to see owls, especially because you don't see them every day. This photo is phonescoped i.e. I took this photo with my cell phone camera through my spotting scope.

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Author

Olli Haukkovaara

email: olli.haukkovaara @ proton.me

Valkeakoski, Finland

Pale Common Buzzard at Saaremaa, Estonia

 

I was today at Sõrve, Saaremaa with my birding friends Jyri Reinikka & Rainer Häggblom. The weather was nice and lots of birds around; 

Bar-tailed Godwits (Limosa limosa),
Grey Plovers (Pluvialis squatarola),
Red Knots (Calidris canuta),
Woodlarks (Lullula arborea), 

Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros) 
and many, many others.

Also couple of late butterflies, Red Admirals (Vanessa atalanta), were still in flight.

But during this morning the buzzards stole the show. Between 08:20 - 10:30 we saw 5 Rough-legged Buzzards (Buteo lagopus) and 71 Common Buzzards (Buteo buteo). One of them was really interesting, it was so called "Börringe-type" Common Buzzard i.e. a very pale individual. This was first time ever I saw this kind of buzzard!😊

Later I found a photo of possibly the very same individual from Antero Lindholm's and Annika Forsten's webpage. If you're interested in these pale buzzards, take a look at their page, there's more photos of them.

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Author

Olli Haukkovaara

email: olli.haukkovaara @ proton.me

Valkeakoski, Finland

(Photo © Annika Forsten)

White-tailed Eagle

 

Today I saw a White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) once again. So it startles inland birder each and every time. In the coast you would get bored(?) at them, but here in Häme these eagles are not daily tidbits. This observation has, by the way, a certain by-plot; I called to my friend Tom and told him about White-tailed Eagles that were seen in lake Rauttunselkä in Valkeakoski. Tom had never seen White-tailed Eagle in his life and in fact he probably had thrown in the towel, as 2/3 of his life he had waited to see one - in vain... I teased him a bit and said that I'll go now to Viidennumero to watch White-tailed Eagle - and so it happened! This incident provoked him, so he decided to give one more try - and finally he saw that king of birds. :-) If you understand finnish, you can read his whole story here.

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Author

Olli Haukkovaara

email: olli.haukkovaara @ proton.me

Valkeakoski, Finland

Fool owls...

 

...made me frustrated once again. I did the second fruitless owl trip this year, I had planned to listen hooting of Eurasian Eagle Owls (Bubo bubo) and Tawny Owls (Strix aluco). Locations were supposed to be 100% sure, as just one evening before other birdwatchers had heard there 3 Eurasian Eagle Owls and 1 Tawny Owl. But today they were all mute, although the weather was exactly the same. Well, luckily the starry sky was beautiful and I managed to see couple of shooting stars.

But the logic of owls is totally incomprehensible, at least what comes to hooting times...

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Author

Olli Haukkovaara

email: olli.haukkovaara @ proton.me

Valkeakoski, Finland

Glaucous Gull

 

TodayI found spontaneously a Glaucous Gull (Larus hyperboreus) from icy lake Vanajanselkä, right close to a shore. These small rarities are always nice to find without twitching them, self-found rarity "tastes" much better than twitched.

This particular visitor from Arctic Ocean stayed in Heinunranta, Kalvola, only a moment and flew then northwest. On a way to home I saw the same bird again in Viidennumero at Valkeakoski.

(The gull on the photo is not the same individual but another Glaucous Gull that I saw in Viidennumero in 1994. Sorry for the poor quality, it's heavily cropped from the scanned slide.)

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Author

Olli Haukkovaara

email: olli.haukkovaara @ proton.me

Valkeakoski, Finland

Shipwreck as a home of the Great Cormorants

 

Shipwreck in Aristelaht Bay, in Saaremaa, Estonia

Visible shipwrecks don't exist on Finnish waters - at least I have never heard about such. Well, of course there's lot's of them under the sea surface, but you need to know the exact place and dive, if you want to see one. But you don't have to go far from here to see a shipwreck, as at least one big abandoned ship is still in Ariste Laht in Saaremaa, Estonia. Let's hope it can stay there, because nowadays it's inhabited by a large colony of Great Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo). The photo is taken through spotting scope with cell phone camera.
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Author

Olli Haukkovaara

email: olli.haukkovaara @ proton.me

Valkeakoski, Finland

The Güldenstädt's Redstart in Finland

 

Male Güldenstädt's Redstart (Phoenicurus erythrogaster).
Kalvola, Häme. Finland. October 1993

At Kalvola, Finland, Monday 11th October 1993 was cloudy and grey. Ari Lehtinen - undoubtedly the most active birder in the southern part of this province of Häme - had just started his lunch hour and was walking towards the can­teen at his work-place (without his binoculars, of course) when he noticed a strange bird per­ched on a telegraph pole. It was small with a rusty-red breast, but what was it?

His first thought was that it was some exotic kind of thrush, but then the bird flew showing its black-and-white wings. He followed the stranger and soon managed to approach it down to a distance of just four metres. It was not a shrike, as the wings had suggested for a moment, nor a thrush. And then it shuddered its tail: it was a redstart, but a big one!

Ari vaguely remembered the name 'Güldenstädt's Redstart'. Could this be it? This was not a Common Redstart, nor a Black Red­start... and Moussier's Redstart has a white band in its head... so this must be the Güldenstädt's!

Not surprisingly, Ari missed his lunch that Monday. He rushed into his office, phoned out the news and negotiated with the managers of Hackman Iittala Ltd to allow birders access to the industrial area where the bird had settled. Everything went very smoothly and the first birders arrived within 15 minutes. By the end of the first day, about 350 people had seen the bird, and over the next week or so the total of visiting birders was at least 700.

The bird kept to an area only about 200m across. Sometimes it disappeared inside bushes for half an hour or so, but it was generally very visible. It spent most of its time dropping onto insects on the ground from bushes, walls and roof tops, and it also took the berries of Red-­berried Elder (Sambucus racemosa) and Japanese Barberry (Berber thunbergii).

The male Güldenstädt's Redstart (Phoenicurus erythrogaster) is really an unmistakeable bird and the accompanying photograph shows the main features well. The bird was caught and ringed on 14th October. Its plumage was in very good condition and there were no signs of captivity. The age of the bird is still uncertain, but it is thought that it may have been a first-winter.

There are two races of Güldenstädt's Red­start, the nominate erythrogaster which breeds in the Western Palearctic in the Caucasus, and grandis, which breeds in central Asia and Trans­baikalia. Compared to the nominate race, grandis has more extensive white on the bases of the primaries (forming a bar c.10-15 mm wide, whilst the nominate race has a bar just c.5 mm wide) and this indicates that the Kalvola bird was of the race grandis.

Little is known about range changes or popu­lation trends, but the species is thought to be mainly a short-distance migrant, although some birds disperse further. It has, for example, straggled to northern Saudi Arabia, whilst the birds seen on the north China plain in winter are believed to come from the Transbaikalia population. According to BWP, in Europe outside the former USSR, Güldenstädt's Red­start has been seen only in Bulgaria. There is one record of an escaped male in Britain (at Burnley, Lancashire, in December 1971).

Güldenstädt's Redstarts breed up to the permanent snowline at c.5000m, so it is quite tolerant of severe weather, but the bird disap­peared after the morning of 20th October, when the temperature was already as low as -6°C. Many birders had seen a sparrowhawk hunting in the redstart's favoured area, however.

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Author

Olli Haukkovaara

email: olli.haukkovaara @ proton.me

Valkeakoski, Finland