On Saturday we did a trip to Porkkala to watch migration. Truly a premier spot to welcome the first arriving spring migrants. We arrived late, the sun had been up for a while already. But alas! No birders present! Highly unusual to be able to arrive to Porkkala in spring with the sea free of ice and not see any other birders. In April and May such a situation will be virtually impossible – unless it happens to rain. Eventually a few more people did arrive but only a handful. I’m used to standing there in a crowd of a hundred…

We got just what I had been hoping for – and more. The early spring migrants, such as Skylarks, Eiders, Stock Doves, Eurasian Buzzards, a Rook, a flock of Velvet Scoters, Red-breasted Mergansers… Some species that are common also in the winter were also on the move, Goldeneyes, Goosanders, flocks of Long-tailed Ducks, Crows and Swans (both species).

Highlight of the day was a 2nd cy Black-legged Kittiwake that came from the East and flew slowly past at a nice distance. It was in no hurry to get anywhere in particular and after flying left and right for a while it disappeared behind a nearby island. It’s apparently been present for a while already but for us it was a surprise.

All the migrating Larks we saw were for some reason heading South, perhaps they knew what was to come in the afternoon – by the time I got home the sky was full of big, fat, white snowflakes floating down.

A week ago I spent the weekend in Raahe in an identification meeting. Bird identification that is. We were four guys in the car, we started real early on Saturday morning and drove like a hundred hours to Raahe (read: seven hours). I tried to sleep at least 300 kilometers. At some point when I woke up, the landscape had turned wintery, there was snow on the ground. Winter is beautiful in Finland – something I had almost forgotten this winter living here on the southern coast and longing for the snow that just didn’t come.

When finally in Raahe by the completely ice-covered Gulf of Botnia the name of the game was watching photos of birds that are impossible to identify and listening and learning how to identify them. Iberian Chiffchaff was the first species – a species I’ll never see and if I do I won’t know what the hell it is. The Warblers (Blyth’s Reed, Eurasian Reed and Marsh) were the other lesson – a bunch I rarely see, I usually only hear them. Do I now know how to separate them – nope. Then there were hundreds of great bird photos from far away places. And in the evening sauna. Fantastic!

Good company and smooth arrangements made it a very nice weekend indeed. Even my hangover was mild. Thank you for the people responsible arranging it. And thank you to Pasi for the ride and Pepe and Jukka for the company.

I was unable to escape it. Not that I would have tried. The sound penetrated through a double window and into my ears as I was reading a newspaper. I wasn’t aware of nature at that time. A Great Tit shouting it’s heart out outside the window changed that. What the hell. I had a good half an hour. The news weren’t that good anyway – they rarely are. I went out.

The grass between the ditch and the plowed field was dead and yellow, there was no sign of any spring flowers. The field seemed inviting for a Lark or a Lapwing to my human eyes. But it was empty. A lone Crow on the roof of a distant barn bowed its chest down and opened it’s bill. I could hear nothing but I figured the sound got lost in the warm wind. For warm it was. And the sun was shining. Making the water (flowing free of ice) in the ditch sparkle.

So I followed the ditch to the end of the field and then through the Alder thickets until I got to the lake shore and then on the ice. For frozen it was. There was someone skating. I felt darn clumsy on the slippery ice with my worn out shoes. On the opposite side of the lake, on the ice, there were white lumps. And some of the white lumps had long white necks they stretched towards the sky. And they made a trumpet-like sound.

A major part of the appeal of being a birder (albeit a bad one) is getting to see the finest that nature has to offer. I really get to spend time in some of the most beautiful and serene surroundings. And last Sunday was no exception. I got to go birding on a dump.

Yes, that’s right, the largest pile of garbage in all of Finland. And man what a pile it is. A mountain really. And next to the mountain, a hole the size of – umm, dozens of football fields. And that hole is going to be filled with garbage and it’s going to grow to be a mountain as well. So I’m talking ’bout a whole lot of garbage here. Now here’s my message to you brothers and sisters: RECYCLE! I’m telling you, you got to do it. Otherwise your kids will drown in garbage. Seriously. Trust me. I have been to the mountain…

Now I’m no strager to birding on dumps. I’ve been on trips in the heat of July, and that’s when the smell is real bad. So in December I have no problems, no smell at all, becuse it’s cool man (the weather that is). In some parts of the world there are raptors on dumps, but we have it even better. We have gulls, thousands of them. Well, there were some raptors too, several Goshawks were trying to get a meal from the flocks of gulls and there were a few Eurasian Buzzards as well. The amount of gulls was pretty small this time, we estimated 2500 Herring Gulls and 30 Greater Black-backed Gulls. May sound like a lot, but there could easily be twice as much. There were also lots of Jackdaws (about 1000), hundreds of Crows and dozens of Ravens.

It really is a pretty nice winter birding destination. There grows plenty of just the right stuff for seed eating birds. Stuff that’s called weeds in the outside world of neat parks. Cursed gardeners! It’s a kind of wildness a birdwatcher can appreciate. And it can’t really exist in the outside world. This is an area with fences around it and one needs a permit to go birdwatching there. Without the fences it would be ruined, there would surely be grass sown and park benches, and people walking their dogs and… but now, it’s peaceful, no people, just the Jackdaws and the gulls shouting. Mind you, it was only peaceful because it was Sunday. On weekdays there are dozens and dozens of trucks emptying their loads of garbage.

But back to the birds. Tree Sparrows, Starlings, Chaffinches… Among the flocks of Common Redpolls there were Twites and also some Hoary Redpolls, which was actually a year-tick for me (better late than never). There was also a Wood Lark and a flock of three Horned Larks on the top of the mountain. Not bad for a day in December.