Finland in May (1 Viewer)

[wolfbirder]

It's actually not a difficult trip - but you do sometimes have to wait until you know if its a good owl year or not. And that can mean leaving it til around March/April, even as late as early May.

The Finnature site offers dates for individual tours etc. Also if you just want to see owls sat on the nest then early to mid May is fine, but if you want to see them hopefully more active then probably early June is best before the youngsters can fledge away from the nest site.

I know Ryan Air offer cheaper flights to Tampere but its still quite a drive to Oulu. I twice flew Finnair from Manchester to Oulu via Helsinki, the second time I flew out on saturday and was back Sunday night, having seen Great Grey owls, Hawk owls, and Ural owl. I was lucky with the Ural owl sighting, but the views of the other two were superb. This was June so they were feeding fledged youngsters so were more active, but were still tied to the nest site.

I also went with Finnature mid May-2009 and enjoyed great views of Pygmy owl, Tengmalm's owl at the nest box, and Great Grey owl on the nest, but dipped on Ural Owl tho she could just be glimpsed in the box. No Hawk owl that year. Also had Black Woody, Black Grouse, RL Buzzard, SE Owls, Hen harrier, Common Rosefinch, Woodcocks, & Capercaillie (a female very briefly) but failed with Three-Toed Woody.

Finnature tours cost 200 euros but for me it is just one of those trips you have to do. Do not even think you can find the owls your self, the vast expanses of forestry with seemingly identical tracks lacking fieldmarks, means you have zero chance.

I love Finland, I have also found Pine Grosbeaks in centre of Rovaniemi in December (thanks to precise advice help from CAU - Birdforum member), plus loads of Waxwings, Parrot Crossbill, a few Northern Willow Tits, and plenty of Redpolls (including a few Arctic).

Would love to spend more time in the country.

See my trips under vacational trip reports if you want to.

 

[orniodesigns]

If traveller has no option to choose a year, in my opinion they can come anyway. Luckily owl populations in different parts of Finland are usually not in the same cycle. If the year is bad in the south, there might be lots of owls in the north and vice versa. Sometimes situation can be totally different even there is only some tens of kilometers between!

We finished Bird Atlas last year and those maps are great tool for trip planning. You will find maps by scientific name and pressing small Finland sign will open breeding map of the species. Whith these maps you get quite good idea in what part of the country you should go for different species.

Front page of Atlas maps

http://www.lintuatlas.fi/result.php

Here is some maps
Pygmy Owl

Ural Owl


Great Grey Owl

Capercaillie

White Backed Woodpecker

 

[Robert L Jarvis]

Have to say that mapping is absolutely brilliant. I take it the greatest densities of birds is marked by the black dots/crosses.

Just out of interest my Wife and I visited Scandinavia back in 2001. We toured in our own car from the 28th May to the 20th June. We landed in Gothenburg and drove up Sweden birding on the way right round to Oulu in Finland. From there we worked northwards through Finland to Finnmark again birding all the way and back down Sweden to Gothenburg for the ferry.

In Finland we hired Finnature as for Owls all the guide was able to produce was Hawk and Tengmalms! We had private contacts from which we were able to see Eagle, Ural and Great Grey. We dipped on Pygmy.

 

[orniodesigns]

Key: Red areas are best known. White dont have data at all.

Dark dot: Breeding for sure during Atlas years
Open dot: Breeding likely but not 100% sure
small dot: Breeding possible.

Area for each dot is 10x10km.

Some of the most vulnerable species are not shown.

 

[orniodesigns]

Links have been changed in Museum.

Here is new ones:

Pygmy owl

Great Grey Owl

Ural Owl


White backed Woodpecker

 

[orniodesigns]

This year’s owl situation looks good at least in South East Finland. Earlyest Tengmalm´s Owls have nestlings already and Ural Owls are incubating. There is lots of voles and mice so it is possible that some Tengmalm´s Owl pairs will start breeding later.

 

[lostinjapan]

That is good news . Looking forward to seeing some of those owls .

Cheers

Sean

 

[lostinjapan]

Hi all

Well am back from an amazing trip to Finland. We managed to see 170 species, and we pretty much got all our target species. Some of the best species included Hazelhen, Capercaille, Terek Sandpiper, Three-toed Woodpecker (and 6 other woodpecker species), Pine Grosbeak, Two-barred Crossbill, Ural Owl, Hawk Owl, Tengmalm's Owl, Pygmy Owl, Great Grey Owl, Pallid Harrier, Siberian Jay and many many more!! We wwere also fortunate to see Wolverine and Elk into the bargain.

Many thanks to Jaanne Aalto for leading our intrepid group and his wife Hanna for helping to arrange the tour. He was incredibly knowledgeable and without him our tour would have been a shadow of what it was.

Many thanks also to Robert Ulph, David Bruce and Dave Bywater for being such great travelling companions and doing all that driving and putting up with the cramped car space and roughing aspect to some of the trip.

He is also far more reasonable than his main rivals Finnature and offered us great flexibility in what we wanted to do.

You can read more about their work and his guiding at his website:

www.caligata.com

A few pics below to give a flavour of the trip, but a full trip report will follow.

Cheers

Sean Minns

 

[jogresh]

Nice one Shozbo sounds like u cleaned up, v jealous of the Wolverine! Looking forward to the no-holds-barred trip report!
Cheers.

 

[Arbu]

Thanks for organising the trip, Sean. Has to have been a great trip when Siberian Tit, Red-flanked Bluetail and Great Snipe don't even make the list of highlights!

Robert Ulph