Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - Yellow-browed Weekend
Spent the weekend on the island of Rönnskär, on the bird observatory there (or bird station as we call them in finnish). There were just two of us there - Jukka was ringing and therefore I counted migration. So - on Saturday and Sunday mornings I was up bright and early gazing into the horizon (over the mainland and out to sea) and listening to the sounds from the skies. The island is located three kilometers south from the tip of Porkkala peninsula by the way, in the bay of Finland.
And don't you know, the migration was fairly quiet. That's how it always seems to be on these short weekend -trips, Thursday was cool, Friday -morning was fantastic (and then I arrive in the afternoon), on Saturday it's raining and Sunday -morning is foggy. Well, I shouldn't be complaining, it was a very nice weekend after all. Some highlights: a few big flocks of Cranes on Saturday, not a mass-migration but I can never get bored with the sight of a plow of a hundred big, long-legged and long-necked birds majestically passing over shouting as they go. Sunday was a fairly good day for Wigeon, most of them went unidentified far at sea in poor light, but all the flocks that passed nearby were Wigeons. I don't have the exact numbers, but the day's total is somewhere in the range of two thousand. There were also still plenty of waders on the move, for example a few Bar-tailed Godwits, a Red Knot, a few Little Stints and a few dozen Common Ringed Plovers. A Peregrine always deserves a mention, it's so darn cool. And naturally being away from the city on a small and peaceful island, going to sauna (a beer or six afterwards) and just plain being able to listen to the sounds of the waves of our beloved Baltic sea as you step out of a small red cozy wooden cabin - well if all that doesn't do good to a stressed mind, then what does?
By now some of you are hoping that I get to the point. The point is in the picture below. You see, on Sunday I was having my cup of coffee inside. Jukka was out closing the nets because they were catching so few birds by then. I hear him getting in and mumble something through the closed door, he mumbles a lot of things so I don't react. Then the door opens and his head and a hand with a pouch pops through (that leaves still about 100 kg of the man on the other side). He said: "I have a year-tick for you." I can't really understand what it could be, I have all the easy-ones already, over 200 of them. So I follow him. And sure enough he digs a year-tick out of the pouch. A tiny green-and-white-and-yellow bird that seems to be all stripes, a long supercilium and two wing-bars. Cool! A Yellow-browed Warbler. In the hand. First of this autumn for all Finland and needless to say: the bird of the trip.
Yellow-browed Warbler, Phylloscopus inornatus
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