Brown Bears in Finland

One of the aspects of our Finland trip that I was looking forward to most was a night in a hide on the Russian border, from which our primary hope was to see Brown Bears. Late May isn't the best time to see these beasts as it's the mating season, but the chance of sightings nevertheless remains high. We enjoyed two encounters during the night - the first of which was by far the most memorable. Quite early on (around 20:00) a nervous-looking female tentatively made her way through the bog, her hesitation becoming clear when three tiny cubs appeared around her feet. They were on show for about 10 minutes before disappearing off in to the forest towards Russia, but not before I'd taken several hundred images. Our second sighting came in the twilight at about 01:00 - a brief male that lingered only for a matter of seconds.

There was plenty to see from the hide while waiting for the bears, including at least three White-tailed Eagles and displaying waders such as Spotted Redshank and Wood Sandpiper. A handful of supremely elegant Baltic Gulls also popped in and out.

adult Baltic Gull 

Spotted Redshank in breeding finery

Calypso Orchids at Oulanka NP

Calypso bulbosa is arguably the most stunning of all Europe's orchids. Known more widely as the Fairy Slipper or Calypso Orchid, the flowering plant is a perfect design of nature. Exhibiting one or two rounded green leaves at the base a deep red stem that reaches heights of around 15cm, its appearance is one of uncluttered simplicity. This ensures that the plant's crowning glory, its sole pinkish-purple flower, enjoys undivided attention.

It's impossible not to admire this species in full fettle. It is a genuine work of art - delicate, intricate and exotic, the amazing flower of Calypso bulbosa looks like it belongs in the tropics rather than the taiga - yet it thrives in Finland's boreal forests.

At 66 degrees north, among the decaying pine needles that litter the forest floor of Oulanka National Park, excellent numbers of flowering Calypso Orchids can be found in late May and June. We were fortunate to find several tens of this spectacular species about a kilometre east of the visitor centre, some right by the main path - many thanks to the help and expertise of Sean Cole, who was back home in the UK at the time.. Here are a few photos.

Siberian Tit

After having had pretty poor views of this species on the Ural Ridge west of Severouralsk, Russia, it was nice to watch a pair attending a nest box near Kuusamo on our final morning in Finland. A few shots below.

Siberian Jay

I was previously quite surprised that we didn't see Siberian Jay on our trip to the Urals in June 2014. Having spent days walking around seemingly perfect habitat up on the Ural Ridge, and having recorded other tricky species such as Siberian Tit during that time, it seemed unfortunate that we'd not seen any. However no other team has yet recorded the jay there and having now seen how inconspicuous the species can be in the summer months, I take the surprise back!

We were in the fortunate position to be taken to see what may well be the most southerly pair of Siberian Jays in Finland (or at least the most southerly known pair), not far from Parikkala. I knew this species was tame, but I wasn't expect them to respond to whistling and subsequently exhibit such a soft spot for cheese that they'd happily take it from the hand! Given that I was keener to actually feed the jays myself, I didn't manage any decent shots of them at this site. Had we not been shown them in an entirely innocuous looking patch of forest, we'd never have known they were there and would undoubtedly have driven straight past - a fine example of the 'needle in a haystack' situation when searching for boreal specialities in Finland, and illustrating why local knowledge is essential in these endless forests.

Hannu Siitonen, Olympic javelin silver medallist at Montreal 1976, feeds one of the Parikkala jays

Siberian Jay, Parikkala

Further north we encountered a family of confiding Siberian Jays at Valtavaara, at the traditional Konttainen layby site. Though they didn't succumb to the lure of cheese like the pair at Parikkala did, they were fantastically showy and afforded great photo opportunities.

Finland's owls

One of the main attractions for wildlife enthusiasts and photographers visiting Finland is the range of boreal owls that can be seen in the country. In late spring and early summer these birds are breeding, which makes locating them a difficult task. Although it's possible to locate some of the more conspicuous species with a lot of luck and graft, using a local guide is the most sensible option as others such as Great Grey and Tengmalms are otherwise more or less impossible to see. We were indebted to Harri Hölttä for his help in seeing Ural, Tengmalm's and Great Grey Owls around Joensuu; further north we were fortunate enough to locate our own Pygmy and Hawk Owls.

Ural Owl
Single birds seen at two different nestboxes around Joensuu.

Great Grey Owl
Two nests visited (Parikkala and Joensuu), both revealing little more than the head of their respective occupants.

Tengmalm's Owl
A single individual at a nest box west of Joensuu.

Pygmy Owl
A vocal bird showed well to the south of Kajaani in the early hours of 25th.

Hawk Owl
Single individuals seen at two sites to the south of Taivalkoski, one of which proved extremely confiding.

Finland trip

In late May I spent a hugely enjoyable six days in Finland with Rob and Dan Pointon. Happily we cleaned up on all our target birds (seven WP ticks for me plus lots of quality) without any huge difficulties - largely thanks to our guide, Harri Hölttä, and the patience of Jände Nordblad, Mika Bruun  and Kari Haataja among others when it came to our persistent requests for gen. Thanks guys.

Now that I've been through all of my images it's my intention to blog a series of photo-heavy posts in the coming days. I suspect a trip report of sorts will follow but as a quite a lot of gen for this trip is sensitive to varying extents, it might be a bit vaguer than usual. In the meantime, here's some scenery.

South of Parikkala

Woods around Joensuu

Typical Finnish scene

Valtavaara

Late Spider Orchids

All European orchids have a charm to them but it is the genus Ophrys - the insect imitators - which are my favourites. These, arguably the most characterful of all Palearctic taxa, tend to be quite small and at first can appear inconspicuous. Look closer and they are anything but - the flowers are invariably stunning, their beauty epitomised by a spectacularly patterned lip which immediately draws focus. Indeed it is not just the botanist that finds them so alluring - so well-designed are the flowers that they readily fool amorous male insects in to mating with them, thus pollinating them.

Four Ophrys species occur in Britain. Bee Orchid is by far and away the most widespread and recognisable while Early Spider can be found in colonies numbering in to the thousands along the south coast in April and May. The third species, the diminutive and elegant Fly Orchid (my favourite British orchid), is also quite widespread but never particularly common. That leaves a final, much scarcer representative - Late Spider Orchid. Occurring at just a handful of locations in Kent, Late Spider is the trickiest member of its genus to see in Britain - or at least as tricky as twitching stationary flowers can be. Perhaps I should say it's the one that requires the most effort ...

For various reasons I have failed to make said effort to see Late Spider Orchid in either of the previous couple of years. I was determined to put the record straight in 2016 and so set an alarm for 04:00 on Sunday morning. Somewhat miraculously I resisted the urge to ignore it and was soon out of bed and on to the M25, heading for the far south-east as the sun began to rise.

The first colony of Late Spiders I visited were easily found thanks to the myriad of protective cages that betrayed their presence. The majority weren't yet flowering and many were stunted and unimpressive; just one or two plants looked good and so photo opportunities were a bit limited. James Lowen had informed me that this is a good site for Black-veined Moth but I couldn't see any in a reasonably brief search - perhaps it's still a tiny bit early in the year for them? Either that or I was still half asleep.

With the Late Spiders failing to impress I headed over to another site, nearer to Folkestone. Here I found a much better range of flowering specimens and, although the 20 or so plants meant that photo opportunities were always going to be a little restricted, I came away with a more pleasing series of images. I was struck by the amazing variation in lip shape, size and pattern among individual plants - the British colonies are apparently notorious for this. Also here were a few fairly puny Man Orchids and a handful of Common Spotted just beginning to flower.

I still haven't worked out what conditions I find best for photographing orchids. I quite like the early morning sunshine, which gives the subject a nice glow, but bright sunshine quickly becomes too harsh at this time of year and I tend to prefer neutral light for photography anyway. The above three images were taken during a brief spell of cloudier conditions at the second site while the below image was taken in sunshine.

Offering more or less wall-to-wall blue skies, Sunday was fantastic morning to be out on the Kent Downs. Late Spider was my first new orchid of 2016 - I have a few more targets to mop up in the coming weeks, so be prepared for one or two more flowery posts.

North Uist and back

If you were to ask most birders what the likelihood of them seeing a live Black-billed Cuckoo in the British Isles was, it's highly likely that the vast majority would have rated the probability somewhere between "microscopic" and "nil" before last Sunday.

Black-billed Cuckoo, a bird that has only appeared once in Britain in a quarter of a century, has a reputation for arriving on this side of the Atlantic in poor health (many have been dead or dying) and rarely lingers for more than a day, is notorious for being among the most difficult species to catch up with on our shores. Even in the heydays of the 80s there are countless tales of birders arriving a day too late to see one, or even stuck on the wrong island while down on Scilly. This, combined with their apparent decline in the States and the clear downturn in occurrences on this side of the Atlantic, created a dire scenario - it seemed any occurrence of the species had become almost impossible to come by, let alone a remotely twitchable individual. Then came the faint glimmer of hope: records from Brittany, France, in November 2013 and North Ronaldsay in October 2014 hinted that, one day, British birders might be afforded another opportunity to see what ranks as one of the most enigmatic of all Nearctic landbird vagrants recorded in Europe.

I spent last week in Finland. It was a fantastic six-day trip - beautiful scenery, brilliant wildlife and great weather. The only blemish on a perfect - if largely sleepless - week was that little more than an hour after our arrival in Helsinki on Sunday 22nd, Chris Batty had phoned Dan to tell us that a Black-billed Cuckoo had been found on North Uist. Initially we tried to dismiss the report - a Coccyzus in May?! It surely had to be rubbish! It wasn't. Dan was beside himself; even the failed twitcher, yours truly, couldn't help but feel gripped.

The week slipped by and, day by day, we were informed of the cuckoo's continued presence. It showed no signs of poor health, like so many of its predecessors, and by Wednesday the first waves of cautious optimism were beginning to flow through our veins. By the time we flew back on Friday, a plan was in place - we'd land at Heathrow, head back to mine in West London and hit the road north with the aim of getting on the Saturday afternoon sailing of the Uig-Lochmaddy ferry.

The drive was one of the worst I've done for a long time. A chronic lack of sleep in Finland made it a battle. By the time we reached Glasdrum Woods, north of Oban, we'd been travelling constantly for the best part of 18 hours without rest. But with these sort of things, you just have to grit your teeth and keep going - the last remotely twitchable Black-billed was in October 1990. I was nine months old, Dan two months and both James and Liam, who made up the rest of the team, were still some way off being born.

It was a beautiful morning in Argyll and it was no surprise to see that Glasdrum's Chequered Skippers were out enjoying the already-warm sunshine at 7 am. At least 15 were seen, some of which hadn't yet warmed up enough and were affording decent photo opportunities. Also there were plenty of Small Pearl-bordered and a single Pearl-bordered Fritillary.

Chequered Skippers, Glasdrum Woods, Argyll, 28 May 2016

Shortly after leaving Glasdrum our nerves were transformed to exaltation as Dan received a text message from Adam Archer saying something along the lines of "f**king get in!" Evidently the cuckoo was still around, now all we had to do was get there ...

Skye proved packed with eagles: we had an adult Golden south of Portree, 3cy White-tailed just north-west of there and then three Golden and two White-tailed around Uig. The ferry crossing produced a couple of Arctic Skuas, a Bonxie and a breeding-plumaged Great Northern Diver plus some extremely distant Bottlenose Dolphins.

Dan barged his way to the front of the hire car queue and we were soon on our way west from Lochmaddy. Fifteen minutes later and the search was on. More and more people arrived and fanned out. It was a particularly warm afternoon - far too toasty for the jeans, coat and boots I was in. For some time it was just the usual displaying waders and a singing Common Cuckoo that kept us entertained.

An hour or so in to the search and suddenly, some distance from where we were stood, there were the tell-tale signs that something exciting was happening: birders waving, starting to run. We jumped straight in the car and bombed down to gardens near Loch Sandary. The crowd grew near, the car was ditched. Seconds later there it was, poking its fantastic head out of a Christmas tree. The bird we all hoped - but dared not believe - we might one day see.

Black-billed Cuckoo, Paible, North Uist, 28 May 2016

It proved quite mobile for the next hour but afforded great views for much of that time. It was, however, pretty unobtrusive for long periods as it sat motionless in bushes. It could easily go missing without large numbers of observers looking and it's no wonder that there'd been no sign for much of the previous day.

After having had our fill of the cuckoo, we mooched off for a drive around North Uist and Benbecula. It was a glorious evening and waders were displaying all around: Dunlin, Common Snipe, Redshank ... and eventually our target, Red-necked Phalarope; a cracking pair.

Rather than head back for the cuckoo (which apparently showed beautifully at around 8 pm) we decided to return to Lochmaddy. We wanted to watch the Champions League final and so went to the Lochmaddy Hotel, but were given the cold shoulder ("we're too busy", said the waitress). This was a fortunate turn of events as we ended up eating at the nearby Hamersay House, where the food was excellent and the place generally far superior.

Sunday was spent sleeping and mooching around the cuckoo site (we didn't see it) before checking a few gardens on the south side of the island. Nothing interesting, but another pleasant day and a calm return crossing on the ferry. The journey back south from Uig proved tedious due to an hour-long tailback near Loch Lomond; it wasn't until after midnight that we reached Dan's in Staffordshire. Not that it mattered much after such a successful 48 hours - Outer Hebrides twitches are always among the most enjoyable, not least because of the wonderful scenery on offer both en route and on arrival. Here's to the next one!

Dalmatian spotted

Title of post shamelessly stolen from the Birdwatch office midweek ...

Travelling to see this Dalmatian Pelican, which has been touring Cornwall for the best part of a week now, was really one of those insurance jobs that'll likely get you nowhere in the long run - think along the lines of Chinese Pond Heron, Demoiselle Crane and indeed Great White Pelican ...

This is the second pelican I've seen in Britain following the Great White in Kent in August 2006; that bird proved to be an escape. This one is a little less clear-cut and is, on paper, as good as it's going to get over here - a bit more info on its status and history here. The problem lies with the unknown number of unringed, free-flying (or escaped) continental birds that are on the loose.

So, I doubt this beast will ever make it on to Category A, but it was quite an impressive sight to see it cruising around the skies of west Cornwall.