28. elokuuta 2019

Viikki with Julius. 26.8.2019

On 26th I took Julius and we went to see if there is some good birds around Viikki area. I checked the Tiira database and noticed Red Knot record from that same morning. That was our target bird.
We slowly walked from my house to Viikki fields and there was big flocks of Yellow Wagtails, Barnacle Geese, Ringing Plovers and other field birds. I had also one juvenile Red-backed Shrike and two Whinchats. Sparrow Hawks had clearly some movement and I counted six from the first place and later about 15 from the Purolahti tower.

This bird looked juvenile Mediterranean Gull for like nano second, but then I realized that it is just a Common Gull. 

Rather odd looking Yellow Wagtail. Some Feldegg genes maybe? 

Painted Lady. Vanessa Cardui. 

Flock of Barnacle Geese. 

Julius was finally sleeping just before I got the stroller to Purolahti and I had time to look around by my self. I checked the meadow and shore and found only some Wood Sandpiper first, but finally after 15 minutes I got the Knot! It was quite far away, but with telescope I easily saw the features of first winter bird. I always forgot how big they are! Also some Great Egrets fishing at the bay and I had three birds from there. Honey Buzzard, Common Buzzard, Kestrel and Merlin were all nice to see and Merlin was actually a year tick for me. Julius slept about an hour and we continued to Hakala but nothing interesting there. I walked around the forest area and we were back to fields in no time.

Red Knot, not really red, but great bird anyway. 

One of three Great Egrets. 

Julius and Cows. 

Julius just before we saw the Eagle. 

Whinchat.

Gold Finch. 

I was already leaving when I got the alarm message of Lesser-spotted Eagle flying our direction. I thought it for few seconds and I walked back to one intersection, put my telescope on and we started to wait.
I took Julius from the stroller cause I knew that it will take some time to fly from Espoo to Viikki. We played around and one elderly woman stopped with her binos and asked if we have seen something interesting. I told her about the Eagle and she started to wait with us.
We were talking something and I noticed a another alarm of the bird and someone had the bird just above us at same time!!
I took Julius to stroller and started to scan the sky and finally after minute or two I found the eagle quite close but very high. I told others that where it is and watched the bird with telescope to make sure that it is a right bird. It was. Clearly pale individual and looked fine for Lesser-spotted. Then it made some movement, I lost it and never saw it again!
I tried to find it but nothing. Lone Buzzard, but nothing else.

I saw some other guys looking it too so I walked to ask them if they saw where it went. They told me that just came and update message that bird took some more heights and went towards East.
We talked about he bird and everybody were happy. I got a stroller tick and damn finally I was at the right spot.

Later evening people posted some pictures of the bird and shit, it looked little different. Too pale and all the features pointed towards "Fulvescens" type Greater-spotted Eagle! This light form of the eagle is not too common and not sure how many records there is from Helsinki area. Here is a link to Pertti Rasp´s photo of the bird.

Also Dick Forsman confirmed the ID of the bird and said that it is possibly 3cy bird.

After the final id of the bird I was thinking this more and I´m sure that when the bird was ID`d earlier by some one else my own thinking was poor and I trusted a bit too much for it. Also very short time I saw the bird did not help me with this at all. Great feeling to learn something and I bet I will be more critical or at least more careful with these after this bird.

But anyway, who cares. This was just my own thinking and nobody it really interested about that.

Great day and shame that I had already that Greater-spotted Eagle on my stroller list.
Tomorrow on 29th I will go to Vuosaari hill with Tyron, so let´s hope some rare raptors and other good stuff!

-Tom

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