Sunday, January 28, 2007 - Birds with horns
A horn is "a brass instrument, it's tone is produced by vibration of the lips as the player blows into a tubular resonator." Now that is a prime example of bad sense of humour...
If only this site hadn't been closed when it was. I could've told about a great birding trip in this post. I could've written that I took an early morning ferry to Suomenlinna sea fortress on that sunday morning. I might have written that "the morning was clear, skies were blue and it was cold but still bearable as long as you stayed out of winds way. I pulled my jacket zipper all the way up and my cap down to cover my ears as I walked towards the southernmost island (called Kustaanmiekka by the way). After looking for a while I found what I was searching for - a Horned Lark (Shorelark you say? - screw that name!). It searched for food in a frantic manner on the ground, what it found I don't know, the ground seemed bare to my human eyes. After a moment of attempting to photograph it I was rubbing my hands together in a frantic manner to salvage them from amputation... So quite soon I left it.
Other year-ticks were a White-tailed Eagle that flew by and a pair of Twites. I was more succesful in digiscoping them.
A shy pose of a Twite bathing in the sun.
I'm still not sure if I like this photo or not, so I let you decide.
After this I left Suomenlinna and headed to the number one birding location in Helsinki - Vanhankaupunginlahti -bay. Not as magnificent as it is in the spring now that it's frozen. Anyway - moving around is easy now, so I took a short route across the ice to Lammassaari, which is an island in the middle of it. As soon as I was on dry land I heard the crows. It didn't sound like chitchat, and sure enough, the target of their mobbing was my target as well - an Eagle Owl (another bird wih horns). The crows chased it to a big spruce and disappeared. I walked around the tree trying to see the owl but the branches were too dense. I was beginning to think it had already flown away when I stepped on a dry twig. The owl took off, circled above my head once - it was majestic! - and flew away across the ice. I followed it with my scope as long as it was visible and it got another flock of crows after it - as Eagle Owls always do..."
Mmm, all this I might have written about if this poor site hadn't been vandalised by a hacker.
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Me - Timo Janhonen
Fabulous birding adventures on the south coast of Finland.
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