Bad Finnish Birdwatcher

Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - Counting winterbirds

I was on Ahvenanmaa (Åland) from wednesday to sunday participating in winter bird censuses which have been done there since the (swinging?) 60's. First, on the way there, we counted birds on the ship-route from Turku to Maarianhamina (Ahvenanmaa is a group of islands southwest of mainland-Finland, you see). Record low numbers of birds there, I was told. Great! The White-tailed Sea Eagles offered some consolation. But worth freezing my ass of on deck all the way? I think not!
The actual census-routes meant walking routes of about 7-20 km in small groups - in pairs usually - and counting all the birds observed. There are about 20 routes, so we (about a dozen of us) were busy during the four days. One route per day is plenty when the days are as short as they are.

So - one might think the reality of this trip was as shown on the photos below, serious birdwatching from the seashores (Sampo on the left) to the forests (Johan on the right)...

But that is only half the truth. The second half of the day was spent first by fuelling ourselves with pizza (on the left, Andreas adds oregano and Max admires the size of Pekka's pizza) and later fuelling ourselves with different kinds of beverages (on the right the guys... well, resting).

This winter has been extremely warm. Ahvenanmaa is the last place in Finland where the sea freezes, so usually it's surrounding waters gather good numbers of waterfowl. But not this year. The Baltic Sea is free of ice, and in southern Finland even many of the lakes are still open, so the ducks haven't arrived yet. A gathering of 3000 Tufted Ducks was the biggest we saw, some years there can be ten times more. Other waterbirds in very low numbers indeed.

Well - there were still quite nicely birds that are rare in Finland in winter, such as Purple Sandpipers, Common Snipes, Woodcocks, Razorbills, Dunnocks, Song Thrushes, Redwings and Blackcaps. There were also plenty of Robins, Winter Wrens, Starlings, Chaffinches and Bramblings.

All in all, a very nice trip, not least because of the good (?) company. The landscapes there are something totally different than at home, I'm especially fond of the pictorial pastures there. Also still some nice forests left fairly untouched by man. I wan't to go back...