The national birdwatch 2018 in Finland & other things…

The temperatures have temporarily gone up. First we had a pretty heavy snowfall on Wednesday, we had about 10 centimetres of fresh snow on the ground in the evening that day. But after that it’s been even raining, raining like crazy for a while, but it still didn’t melt all the snow, so, here where I’m living, we’ve had snow on the ground for seven weeks now. And they say that the temperatures are going down again and that it will snow again. Today it’s already been sleeting and snowing, and heavily and very big snowflakes, too.

morning coffee

My morning coffee today. I love maps… I take every opportunity to have a map to look at, any map, everywhere… 🙂

And yes, today I took again part in the national birdwatch, the national birdwatch 2018, Pihabongaus 2018, organized by BirdLife Suomi here in Finland. The event is every year on the last weekend of January, it’s not a competition, just one hour of birdwatching, and anyone can participate. The idea is to get people interested in the nature around them and to collect information about the birds living here in wintertime. And even hearing the birds counts.

January

One of the birds’ hideouts… (I took these last two pictures in this blog post after my birdwatch hour.) So, during my hour I was standing and walking in heavy snowfall and in normal snowfall in our garden. And I heard a concert again! – The voices were many, but, again, I didn’t see that many singers. 🙂

I recognized the voices of crows, magpies, great tits and blue tits and I think I recognized the voice of a some type of sparrow and the voice of a bullfinch – I really was lucky enough to see a few bullfinches here on our bird feeder the other day! 🙂 And I heard a woodpecker knocking somewhere near (I’ve seen two great spotted woodpeckers hear earlier). There always are also some other tiny birds chirping and singing, but I still don’t recognize them…

And the birds I actually saw today: a couple of magpies, one great tit and a flock of small birds – I couldn’t see what birds they were.

So, I was enjoying myself and my hour ended just before my freezing point. 😀

My birdwatching trail…

-Leena