Many good birds around Finland in last few days. With high hopes I took Vilma and Jände with me and together we went to Ämmässuo dump in Espoo to twitch a Rosy Starling. That species has avoided me very effectively. I tried to witch one back in 2016 but it was gone and few birds around Finland, but too far for me or my schedule has been horrible..
Anyway we arrived to Espoo after 10 am and after few hundred meter walk up hill we arrived to the site. I knew that place is huge, but wow.. Distance between us and nearest Starlings were about 350m to 400m. Not an easy task I´d say. Because Vilma was with us I had our strollers and lots of other fun for her. She watched Peppa Pig from out tablet and I gave her a box of strawberries. She was happy most of the time. Here is some landscape photos from the dump.
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| Ämmässuo dump. |
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| Jände and Vilma. |
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| Vilma tried to help us, but no luck today. |
We gave about 1,5 hours for the Starling, but nothing even close to that around. Lots of Common Starlings, different Gulls, Ravens, pair of Whooper Swans and Marsh Harrier. From the dragonfly family I saw lots of Broad-bodied Chasers and some bigger one, maybe Hairy Dragonfly.
Just before we back in my car, an alarm of migrating Eastern Imperial Eagle came from Maari birds tower, Espoo. Quick thinking... Panic... Where to go? Can we still see it from some observation point?
I hit the road again and we started to drive towards Helsinki. Bird was going East rapidly so we had to think how far we have to drive. New info came and it was still flying East from Vanhankaupunginlahti. At this point we decided to drive to Kilpilahti, which is a place just before Porvoo. We thought that this is the spot and we ended up front of it. Vilma was tired and she cried a bit, so I had to hold her and watch the sky at the same time (Not easy, I promise). We had high hopes again, but all we saw was Honey Buzzard, Common Buzzard and Crane.. At some point we were sure that the bird has passed us from another place. It must have gone from our north, or maybe we were too slow. We drove about 60km from Espoo to there and lost of things can happen during that drive.
And almost forgot to mention that this same eagle was seen in Pori yesterday.
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| Vilma having a snack during our raptor watch. |
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| The place where that Imperial Eagle should have been shown. |
After all the dipping and missed birds, I was actually very happy that we tried to do all that. We have always fun with my uncle and with Vilma around, there is no awkward silence in the car. It is also nice to see how Vilma is actually getting more and more interest of birds and today she said me later "daddy, don´t worry. We can try these birds again tomorrow" I can´t be sad after those words.
Thanks for the company Jände, it was a pleasure again.
-Tom
