Limitations and Dilemmas

The last two weekends have been enjoyable from a nature viewpoint but also left me with a few questions to ponder. The first is simply whether I am a birder who takes photographs or someone moving ever closer to ‘it’ being about the photographs rather than the birds. In moving in that direction, which is what it feels like I am doing, will I lose the simple enjoyment in birds and nature that I have felt for many years?

Last weekend was super hot and therefore I was up at 5.00 with the idea of catching the best light and avoiding the heat of the coming day. Walking across Papercourt Meadows, always a peaceful and pleasurable experience, in the early sunshine with a little mist coming off the meadow was indeed a calming start to the morning. Almost immediately l saw a song thrush hopping along the path away from me and then disappearing. The meadow grasses were particularly tall as I edged along the path running parallel with the river and those grasses were covered in snails, often curled around the very tops of the thicker stems. More obvious still were increasing numbers of banded demoiselle, looking stunning in the sunlight. 

Banded Demoiselle

The river is edged by reeds and from here, numbers of sedge warblers were singing but here is my first dilemma of the day; in my wish to obtain a nice image, did I forget to enjoy the song and appearance of this very smart little warbler, proclaiming domination over this patch of reed having braved a dangerous flight from Africa to do so. A wonderful and magical thing then but I did want a nice image!

Sedge Warbler

Moving on, eventually, I tiptoed carefully through the cattle (never comfortable around these animals although they had other things on their minds), across the bridge at Papercourt Lock and almost immediately became entranced by a group of young raptors sat on the ground by the river. I initially thought they were Woking’s peregrines (doing very well indeed this year) but they proved to be four young kestrels, successfully fledged from a nest here on the meadow. I decided to go closer to take a photograph, practically stood next to one before I realised it was there and missed another in a tree I hadn't even looked at (where were my birding skills?)

Kestrel

That sunshine became too hot too quickly and I soon abandoned ship and returned home having, to be fair, thoroughly enjoyed my morning before the heat got to me. Move forward a week and I am on my annual guided tour around Hazeley Heath, an RSPB reserve being developed to bring back heathland but also the woodland and scrubby parts that harbour so many amazing creatures. ‘Guided tour’ because long time friend Dave spends much of his time driving the development as a volunteer warden and it was fascinating listening to Dave’s ideas and plans for the site as we walked round. Dave’s wife Mary, also a volunteer, was with us and brings me back to the photography versus birding debate (in my mind at least) as Mary is a new user of Canon photographic equipment, having converted from Pentax, and I turned up with a shiny new canon zoom lens to test out at Hazeley. My morning was therefore filled with fascinating learning - from Dave about how successful the dartford warblers have been, how many territories the tree pipits occupy, plans for a dragonfly pond and vegetation management for silver washed fritillaries and silver studded blues. From Mary, a more experienced and indeed more able photographer than I, learning about some of the settings on my Canon I had never used and also catching some of the amazing enthusiasm with which she carries out her craft. My version of that craft can be seen here with images of beautiful fritillaries, dazzling blues, gorgeous marbled whites (members of the brown butterflies so I guess brown with white bits not the other way around) and a large skipper where in truth, I think I got too close or at least cropped too vigorously, somewhat abandoning a core belief of mine that natures creatures are best captured including the habitat in which they sit (a bit like the ringlet image).

Large Skipper

Marbled White

Ringlet

Silver Studded Blue

Silver Washed Fritillary

So besides not cropping too much, what did I in fact, learn from these two weekends?

Birding and photography are different but if I do the latter well (better than now anyway), my birding might actually improve by showing the patience you need to capture nice images. Learn from your errors and a thought from our Finnish guide Petri, understand the limitations of the camera. Above all, however you chose to do it, enjoy nature. Both slightly different mornings in slightly different surroundings with slightly different aims were relaxing and hugely enjoyable. In truth, I am never more content than when I am spending time in places like this.

Norway and Fisherman’s Friends

Having spent the previous few days travelling north through Finland, we now crossed the border into Norway, a country I had never before visited. No formalities at the border (apparently only dog passports get checked with any regularity) and we turned onto the road to Tara Bru. Almost immediately we pulled up by the roadside to enjoy great views of cuckoo, a bird often heard, sometime seen, but rarely seen this well. A little further up the road and we had great grey shrike, Norway was treating us well!

Cuckoo

Tara Bru proved to be an ordinary small town but useful for fuel and more coffee! Our next coffee stop (yes again) was in the magnificent surroundings of Hoyholmen, an isolated spot surrounded by rugged, flat mountains showing amazing geological formations and the flowing waters of a tidal fjord which eventually flows into the Arctic Sea. This stop brought us our first skuas in the form of both light and dark phase arctics and a number of arctic terns also.

Our final destination for the day was Batsfjord, a small town on the north coast of Norway’s Varanger peninsula, reached by just one road over the Gednje highlands. These highlands proved to be windswept, snow covered (to a degree that they just shouldn’t have been at this time of year) but quite magnificent. 

An advantage of the conditions was that the bare patches in the snow attracted the birds and we were soon adding a number of highland specialities. Breeding plumaged golden plover (can’t be many more striking waders than this one) were dotted at regular intervals across the landscape along with smaller numbers of ringed plover. Passerines were represented by shorelark, the males showing the handsome face pattern and ‘horns’, Lapland bunting and the perfectly named snow bunting, appearing in small, restless flocks. Harder to spot were willow grouse of which we found two, snow white from neck down but showing a brown head that perhaps allowed us to spot them in the first place. Taru managed to spot a single ptarmigan, one female sitting tight on a patch of earth even though still in bright, white winter garb.

Batsfjord itself had some freshwater as well as salt and this produced more black throated diver, red throated diver, scaup and perhaps sixty or so long tailed duck, showing the mix of plumage the species is known for but still of course, utterly distinctive. Looking away from the water and up at the rocky slope behind us, it did remind me of a spot in Scotland where I had seen ring ouzel and is if by magic, Petri called ‘ring ouzel’ and we had good views of this migratory highland, northern ‘blackbird’. Another good finish to a magnificent day.

Ring Ouzel

The beginning of the next day centred on gulls. Now I have to say that I really don’t get that excited by gulls and it turned out that I had an unlikely ally in Petri. Dave and Frank however like nothing better than to scan slowly through a big flock of the things, looking for a ‘white winger’ or a Caspian (which sounds a good deal more interesting than it actually is). However, we duly kicked off looking through a flock and easily found an immature glaucous gull. 

Glaucous Gull

That’s enough of gulls for now so moving on………

The road back across the Gednje highlands was somewhat more treacherous than the previous evening with the wind up and the snow beginning to drift across the tarmac. We again saw many of the highland specialists such as snow bunting and better views of willow grouse. In truth however, I think we were rather glad to reach the other side and perhaps not that surprised to learn that the road was closed not long after we went through, no doubt not helped by a jacknifed lorry. However, having once again stopped in Tara Bru, we headed east along the northern shore of the Varanger Fjord, our first stop producing more divers, terns and arctic skuas not to mention a decent sized flock of common scoter, including a small number of distant velvet scoter. We moved along the shore to Nesseby Church which turned out to be both a beautiful and productive spot. Waders, mostly dunlin with some ringed plover and the occasional turnstone, were both plentiful and close, running with the waves breaking on the sandy cove on the east side of the peninsular. Petri took my favourite photograph of the trip at this point, catching a beautiful, breeding plumage dunlin, mid stride, with a breaking wave behind. The nearest I could get was a shot of ringed plover which is nice, but not as good as Petri’s!

Ringed Plover

Ringed Plover and Dunlin

However, the excitement here was provided by Frank spotting a large falcon close to the church which saw the man himself running up a slope to get a better loo. Frank running is a rare sight (he isn’t Usain Bolt) but does generally indicate something interesting. What he described was a falcon without the sharply defined hood of a peregrine and as we all watched this bird fly rapidly away, low to the ground, what we saw was a rather uniform, brownish back and upper wings disappearing rapidly into the distance. We talked about this bird quite a bit over the next day or so, discussing the features with another Finnature guide who was familiar with both peregrine and gyrfalcon. In particular, the lack of a pale base to the rump and upper tail and the indistinct hood pointed towards gyrfalcon and it was on this species that we eventually settled. Anyone reading this and thinking ‘well of course you would’ should know that Frank (and I) are pretty hard to convince about rare birds such as this.

One of our targets for this coastline was Stella’s eider and ironically, the continued lack of spring helped us a bit here as we eventually found five immature males in the most easterly part of Vadso harbour, a very distinctive headshape (as it seemed to me) being one of the clinching factors for another life bird for both me and Frank.

A distinctly late lunch at the hamlet of Ekkeroy was the result of a tip off that two grey phalaropes were present a short way off the rocky shoreline. Now also called red phalaropes, these birds lived up to their newer name being in brilliant summer plumage, unbelievably joined by a red necked phalarope as we watched. This was new bird for Petri! Perhaps more surprising still was the ringtail hen harrier that drifted by towards the end of our stay. Our last stop before reaching our base for the next couple of days, Vardo, was Kibberg, a windswept sandy beach with our first purple sandpipers nosing around in the seaweed along with a good sized flock of red knot.

Vardo provided a surprise, to me anyway, even before we reached the town. I could see Vardo, getting closer as we moved along the coast but couldn’t quite work out the landscape; it seemed to be across the water but no one had mentioned a ferry? Well that was my ignorance I guess. Vardo proved to be an island reached by a 2.5km tunnel and on emerging from that tunnel, we entered what is I guess a typical Norwegian coastal town, in this case complete with nesting kittiwake on some of the harbourside buildings. Opening the curtains of our hotel room revealed a view directly into the harbour, with eider, oystercatcher and a single purple sandpiper present on the rocky shoreline immediately below.

Kittiwake

The weather wasn’t all that friendly the following morning but the much anticipated boat trip out to the neighbouring Hornoya Island (Bird Island) was on. Now the short crossing proved a little choppy it would fair to say (Petri and Taru being wholly comfortable and perhaps enjoying the slight discomfort for some in the boat?) but having been safely delivered to the island shore, next to the lined up shags who looked like spectators waiting for at least one of us to fall in the water, we immediately looked up at the facing cliff covered in guillemots, many of the bridled form and smaller numbers of Brunnichs Guillemots, a new species for me. We had a couple of hours to explore and started from the bottom of the cliff, watching the continual comings and goings of the guillemots with constant activity and noise all around us. There were small numbers of razorbill and puffin in the mix with the shags spread out along the cliff bottom and the rocky shoreline. One or two of those giving me a few verbal warnings not to get too close! We spent a challenging few minutes trying to capture flight shots, easier enough for the relatively sedate shags, much, much harder for the swift, jinking auks.

Guillemot

Guillemot (Bridled)

Puffin

Post another excellent fish lunch at the hotel, we headed out on the road to Hamningberg, a small hamlet some miles west and north of Vardo. This was maybe my favourite part of the entire trip, travelling through a truly arctic landscape of rugged, partially snow covered hills fringed by broken rocky edges described alternately as ‘volcanic’ or ‘lunar’. All the while, this dramatic coastline was being pounded by the northern seas driven by a strong wind straight out of the arctic. The coastline produced goosander, divers and diving duck such as long tailed, eider and king eider, another new bird for me this time in the shape of, initially, a single immature male before picking up a flock of perhaps forty further out. As elsewhere, golden plover were common enough along the way along with more dunlin. Rough legged buzzard and a single peregrine livened things up from a raptor viewpoint but if I am honest, it is the almost primeval landscape that will stay with me more than the birds.

Golden Plover

Hamningberg

Saturday was effectively our last as we flew home from Ivalo Sunday morning. So we drove back along the Varanger Fjord which still had moments of wonder to share with us. At Ekkeroy, we watched ruff in someone’s garden, Taru once again crouching on the floor of the minibus to allow us to take photographs as she had done on many occasions in the previous days (Taru was endlessly helpful and in this regard, very flexible!). The same garden produced arctic redpoll and tree sparrow.

Ruff

What was for me, bird of the trip, soon followed, with Mary picking up a skua in flight as we drove west. This one proved to be a long tailed skua in full breeding garb, lovely long tail streamers flexing in the wind and a sight that lives with me now as I write this. I had long wanted to see one of these and was lucky enough to find another at Nesseby church a short while later.

So why Fisherman’s Friends? When we first met Petri some three years previously, a very early question from Dave was whether he went naked fishing (apparently a thing in Norway). This brought a somewhat surprised ‘excuse me?!’ from Petri. On the last evening of our trip, Taru raised the subject of running a naked birding list; cue a series of almost tasteful jokes from Dave on that theme!

Our time in Norway and Finland had provided a number of surprises (like where was spring for example?), many beautiful birds, dramatic landscapes and of course, great company. My thanks to Petri and Taru, whom I hope I shall meet again, and of course to Dave, Mary and Frank. Until the next time.

Finland And Fisherman's Friends

After an uneventful flight, the usual suspects i.e. me, Dave, Mary and Frank, arrived at Oulu airport to be met by the welcome sight of Petri Tamminen of Finnature. We knew Petri from our trip three years previously and were expecting another fabulous week in his company, exploring Northern Finland and Norway (which I will get to in part 2 of this piece of writing).

Post an excellent dinner at the Airport Hotel (a great deal better than the name suggests), we immediately headed out into the surrounding area, cruising around the fields just to ‘see what we could see’. What was immediately apparent is the regularity with which curlew and lapwing occur in these fields, once common birds across similar looking fields in the UK and still thankfully common here. Rarer, even here, was a summer plumaged black tailed godwit.

Black Tailed Godwit

The other noticeably frequent bird, seen in ones and twos wherever we went, was fieldfare, a bird we are used to seeing in winter flocks but here of course, a common breeding bird.

Owls were going to be in short supply on this trip, for reasons I will touch on later, but short eared owls were still a regular feature and I can never tire of seeing these beautiful, elegant birds of prey quartering these fields.

Our first real stop was at what used to be a local water treatment site where we found our first goldeneye, swallows hawking across the surface of the lake and the trips first common rosefinch, this one showing the lovely red head and breast to good effect.

Now the weather forecast for the following day was not great and we were offered a choice as to how to use the best of that weather. Unaccountably, we chose to wake up at 4.00 in the morning (it never really gets dark at this time of the year in this part of the world), fit in some serious birding before breakfast and then rest up whilst the rain did what rain does.

More fields, this time with common crane and the reassuringly common yellowhammer, led us to Saari and then Liminka Bay, two essentially connected shoreline sites that in truth, felt very much like coming home. Here we were able to watch familiar wildfowl such as wigeon, pintail, teal, tufted duck, shoveler and one gorgeous male garganey. Equally familiar were waders such as redshank, dunlin and greenshank. Somewhat less familiar were the ruff in full breeding plumage, with the males sporting black, rust and white ‘ruffs’ in pursuit of the occasionally interested females. We also had the case of the disappearing wood sandpiper. Dave and I had seen this bird move across the earth adjacent to the pathway taking us to the shoreline but when it stopped, it completely disappeared against the brown earth leaving Dave and I going ‘well it was there a minute ago’! Having moved into something with a bit of a contrast, we could at least reassure ourselves of our sanity (on these grounds anyway) and got nice views of a smart bird.

Wood Sandpiper

So, having also added our first arctic terns, black throated diver and white tailed eagle, it was back to the hotel for breakfast…………then a sleep……….then lunch! So much for hardcore birding.

Post all that activity, we drove for an hour or so (I want to say ‘south’?) to our next site discussing on the way a Finnish invention called Moomins, ‘cute’ children’s characters whose image seems to be everywhere. Petri’s response; ‘I hate them’ said in a deep, dark voice full of meaning. Admitting this was probably a mistake given the audience.

Our drive took us to a lonely forest track through pristine ancient woodland and after a short while, to a spot overlooking the nest of a great grey owl. These are truly magnificent birds, seemingly the masters of any forest they occupy and this lady duly looked out over the forest as if she owned it, largely unconcerned with our presence. This was to be our only great grey siting and indeed owls generally are having a hard year in this part of the world. With the late arrival of spring, food sources were low and the owls just aren’t breeding. They are long lived birds and will doubtless recover but tough times.

Great Grey Owl

We finished the day at Phyajoki, a collection of summer houses on the river. We were looking for thrush nightingale, which we didn’t find, but added little gull to the days list and then a very strange common rosefinch that wasn’t so much ‘rose’ as bright orange.

On day three, we were to drive north to Kuusamo, birding on the way. Before doing so, we stopped at a local park to pick up slavonian grebe and whooper swan, definitely not park birds in the UK. We also picked up Taru, a biology student who already leads some of the day trips around Oulu for Finnature and in the future will doubtless take on the longer tours such as this one. Petri apparently hadn’t warned Taru about us!

Whooper Swan

Slavonian Grebe

Next stop Hietasaari, more woodland but this time for a very obliging wood warbler (very hard to find in south east England) and lesser spotted woodpecker, also hard to find and ever rarer in the UK as a whole. 

Wood Warbler

This was followed by our first attempt to find red flanked bluetail, at its finest, a glorious small flycatcher type that lives up to its name when a full, male adult. Perhaps not quite so glorious was our progress through the snow, surprisingly deep as it turned out, Dave first sinking into the powder (with Frank helpless with laughter, looking on and not helping!) before Mary also sank gracefully into the snow, this time aided by Frank (with Dave looking on and in turn, not helping!). The bluetail led us something of a dance, singing for us, sometimes audibly coming closer but never revealing itself.

Driving north, we made the occasional stop but what was striking was the amount of snow and the iced up lakes, beautiful but untimely. Our check in at the hotel in Kuusamo was greeted with a violent squall of snow (ice really), lovely! Undeterred, we were out after dinner and quick check at a local tip gave us no less than three cuckoos before moving on to a known site for black woodpecker. The bird eventually popped her head out of the nest hole and reminded us all just how striking these birds are.

Black Woodpecker

Cuckoo

Driving back along the forest roads was always likely to give us something and a magnificent (if definitely ill tempered) capercaille duly showed itself. In truth, it was more interested in the female close by but at one point, he really did look as if he was charging down the road to challenge the minibus. Great way to end the day.

Day 4 saw us head ever further north, but not before another attempt at red flanked bluetail, this time at a steep hillside site called Valtavaara. Patience rewarded this time with a young male, possibly two, singing happily from the very tops of nearby trees and then somewhat more surprisingly, coming close to us and allowing close views. I have a photo which is left than perfect but which nonetheless does show the blue tail. 

Red Flanked Bluetail

Two Siberian jay then flew lazily across the road, picked at some bread left out by some earlier traveller, and then wandered off, never to be seen again.

We gathered more species as we drove further north; osprey, hen harrier, rough legged buzzard, green sandpiper, common sandpiper, pink footed geese and at Iimakklaapa, more wood sandpiper, arctic tern and crane although it was more fun watching Dave’s shaky progress along the narrow boardwalk (and listening to his thoughts on the human race when other birders came the other way on the narrow boardwalk, very tight!).

Our days driving took us across (into?) the Arctic Circle, marked by a small glass of the local tipple (and cake obviously) and, of course, a giant plastic snowman! The landscape however now really did begin to look truly arctic with stunted trees and huge open snowy areas with the boggy terrain showing through. Not sure how that description sounds but I loved it. Petri said simply ‘I like it a lot’.

Final stop for the day was at Kaunispaa, looking for dotterel in the snow, not easy as it turned out and we never we did find them. A bus load of French tourists livened up the day by turning up and emptying out over the landscape dressed more for a night out than sub zero temperatures and a wicked northerly wind. All this made us look normal and that is saying something albeit during the evening’s conversation, Petri ventured the comment that I was the most normal of the four of us, ‘by far’!

Next day, we were still going north on the road that took us to the Norwegian border, where Part 1 will end. First stop was sort of unintentional in that as we slowed to turn left, I looked right and found myself looking directly at a party of waxwing. These are the most wonderful creatures to look at and I spent some time trying to get decent images, hopefully succeeding to some degree. 

Waxwing

A short distance further on, we parked up and went for a short stroll in some classic pine woodland, finding Siberian tit, understated but very smart, and brambling, not understated at all but also brilliantly attractive.

Moving on, it was time to stop for coffee (which we did quite a bit), this time with a difference. The café certainly provided excellent coffee but the wooded slope to the rear of the café was festooned with bird feeders, in turn covered with brambling, maybe seventy plus, mixed in with some greenfinch, a couple of reed bunting, another Siberian tit and a single willow tit. The star however had to be pine grosbeak and for this, you have to imagine say a crossbill but this time, the size of a thrush or starling. Large, bold and definitely the boss of the feeding station (bar the red squirrel which even a grosbeak couldn’t intimidate).

Brambling

Pine Grosbeak

Siberian Tit

The grosbeak was my second ‘life’ bird of the day and a stunning way to end (more or less) the Finland part of the trip. Oh…….. why Fisherman’s Friends? See part 2!