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!