BirdLife Finland has been organizing a combined birdwatching-competition / birdwatching introduction day for twenty years now. The basic concept is simple: a team is gathered, they pick a birdwatching tower ("tower") and try to see as many species as possible in a limited amount of time. Recently the time has been limited to about 8 hours (5am-1pm) and date has been the first saturday of May (unless it's 1st of May, which is a traditional holiday in Finland). This year we even had a Twitter hashtag. How delightfully modern - Twitter is practically unknown in Finland.
This year we (Elina, Pirita and I) decided to capitalize on the heavy birdwatching effort around North Karelia and decided to go on a field trip to Tohmajärvi, again - third week in a row. Weather forecast had changed from extremely favourable to slightly favourable, but we took off anyways. Maybe we would see something or got a chance to twitch something spectacular...
Day gave us a whopping 96 species. Best among the bunch were Jack Snipe, White Stork, Black Kite, Horned Lark, lots of Lapland Longspurs, two Peregrines, three Black-Tailed Godwits and a female Capercailie. We missed a Black-Legged Kittiwake and didn't stay long enough for a Greater Spotted Eagle. We also didn't see a number of common species (eg. Goldcrest, Dunnock, Hazel Grouse, Blackbird), but 96 species in North Karelia in one day without too much effort was great.
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