Twitching in Hanko with my kids. 25.10.2020

 Yesterday Kim Söderling found Black-throated Accentor from Hanko soil dump. I was pretty eager to go and twitch it, because I have seen only one bird before and this Accentor group really interests me. So today when the info came and the bird was still present I started to talk about the twitch with Sanni. It was OK, but Sanni had to go to work, so it was with kids or nothing. I decided to take the kids. 

We arrived to the place around 11 am and about twenty people around the place looking in different directions. We were lucky cause the Accentor was very near and cause I was carrying the stroller! In few minutes I got the bird with stroller and I let Vilma and Julius just play around and me trying to get some photos of the bird. It was really hard for my Sony RX10 to get any sharp pictures in the ruderate kind of vegetation. 

Bloody little bird was hiding all the time.

Here you can see some features ad head.

Same time there was also European Stonechat around and I needed that with the stroller too. The bird was found before people relocated the Accentor today! First I just went to see the bird, but after that I lured Julius to the stroller and took me five seconds and in the bag! 

Male European Stonechat.

And again.

Because Vilma and Julius just wanted to play, I had time to see if I can improve the photos of the Accentor, but it was not my day. All the photos are bird behind the branch or not sharp anything.. 

Great fun.

Julius at the soil dump.

Photographers at the soil dump.

Later we went to Hanko center and had nice lunch in local small restaurant. We also visited two different playgrounds and we had great time. It was already dark when we arrived back to Helsinki. I had flock of Waxwings, flock of Redpolls with one Arctic with them at the park, so not bad at all. Even that I always know the hardness to twitch with my kids, these days are very very fun. Those two are so full of joy and I just love to watch that. 

Kids at the smaller playground.

The Black-throated Accentor was only 13th record in Finland and if the Tarsiger database is updated, only 39th for the Western Palearctic. We are talking about real mega rarity. I have been very fortunate to see both, Siberian- and Black-throated Accentors this fall and I could not be happier! Congrats to the finder Kim and others too. Hopefully more of these mid blowing rarities appears in next coming weeks and it would be nicer if they could show up in Helsinki area! OK, that was too much, Southern-Finland is OK too! 

-Tom