I was spending normal Sunday morning with my family when I noticed an alarm message of Snowy Owl from our alarm system. I knew that yesterday someone had seen this species in Kouvola area, but I still was surprised that it was found again.
Sanni was super, like she normally is and let me go and I was driving only 30minutes after the bird was found.
It was one of the longest hour and forty minutes in my life and when I arrived to the road where the bird was seen I was sure that this can´t be the right place. It looked like shopped forest and some small cliffs, but that was all, until I arrived to the right place where was small field. I was still driving when I saw the Owl from the car and dude, it was huge! I continued and parked where the other twitchers were and started to look the bird.
It was sitting on a branch the whole 25 minutes I spend there and most of the time it looked our group and then trimmed his/hers feathers. It was a good thing cause when birds take care of the feathers, normally they are in good condition.
There are few different opinions of the age and sex of the bird.
I think that the bird was a female, maybe third calendar year bird, and this is only based on lack of dark areas in feathers, huge size and feeling. Few people were talking about little bit older male, but not really a old enough to get pure white outfit. I have troubles to believe that, but like in many things, I´m not an expert.
We kept nice distance to the bird so everyone could see the bird and it won´t disappear too soon.
After 25 minutes I left and drove straight to home and we took our kids with their cousins to activity park in Ruoholahti and we had good time there. Vilma and Julius were so tired and took maybe 10 minutes to get them to bed after supper.
Here is few pictures of the bird.
So, one of my dream come true birds today, amazing feeling. I didn´t really expect this coming. I tried to twitch this species once from Kokkola, but no success and now like 5 years later I finally got it. Normally twitching does not give me that kind of euphoria feeling, but today it came, like big time. Wow.
First, but hopefully not the last lifer for the year.
-Tom
Sanni was super, like she normally is and let me go and I was driving only 30minutes after the bird was found.
It was one of the longest hour and forty minutes in my life and when I arrived to the road where the bird was seen I was sure that this can´t be the right place. It looked like shopped forest and some small cliffs, but that was all, until I arrived to the right place where was small field. I was still driving when I saw the Owl from the car and dude, it was huge! I continued and parked where the other twitchers were and started to look the bird.
It was sitting on a branch the whole 25 minutes I spend there and most of the time it looked our group and then trimmed his/hers feathers. It was a good thing cause when birds take care of the feathers, normally they are in good condition.
There are few different opinions of the age and sex of the bird.
I think that the bird was a female, maybe third calendar year bird, and this is only based on lack of dark areas in feathers, huge size and feeling. Few people were talking about little bit older male, but not really a old enough to get pure white outfit. I have troubles to believe that, but like in many things, I´m not an expert.
We kept nice distance to the bird so everyone could see the bird and it won´t disappear too soon.
After 25 minutes I left and drove straight to home and we took our kids with their cousins to activity park in Ruoholahti and we had good time there. Vilma and Julius were so tired and took maybe 10 minutes to get them to bed after supper.
Here is few pictures of the bird.
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| Snowy Owl. |
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| What a beast. It was a size of a small eagle. |
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| Bird this rare attracts people. You can see a small white dot in a tree, that was the bird. |
So, one of my dream come true birds today, amazing feeling. I didn´t really expect this coming. I tried to twitch this species once from Kokkola, but no success and now like 5 years later I finally got it. Normally twitching does not give me that kind of euphoria feeling, but today it came, like big time. Wow.
First, but hopefully not the last lifer for the year.
-Tom
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