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Birding Finland on the Fly

10,000 Birds

Here’s his third stop: In June of 2013, we arrived in Helsinki, the capital and largest city in Finland, and our third destination on our European getaway. The spectacle, hosted by The Association of Samba Schools in Finland, includes over 1,000 dancers and musicians and draws a crowd of 20-30,000 with the goal of promoting Samba in Finland.

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Celebrating a Waxwing Winter

10,000 Birds

Secondly, much of the appeal is that this is a bird we don’t see in the UK very often, for Waxwings are an irruptive species, and in most years only a few ever reach our shores from their breeding grounds in the boreal forests of Scandinavia. I’ve managed to see them, too, on their breeding grounds in Finland in summer.

Finland 205
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What the rings reveal

10,000 Birds

Black-tailed godwits winter in large numbers on the estuaries of both Norfolk and Suffolk, and we know that nearly all these birds breed in Iceland. In breeding plumage islandica godwits develop a deeper red plumage than their limosa cousins. They are of the race islandica , a sub species of the nominate race, limosa.

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Birding Shanghai in December 2022

10,000 Birds

According to one paper , the Spotted Redshank is the German among the waders, at least in Finland: its arrival and departure on the breeding grounds are the most predictable. Surprisingly, they only stay on the breeding grounds for about 5 weeks. Then again, that is probably the length of summer in Finland.

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How to find the Ural Owl in Serbia

10,000 Birds

The Ural Owl inhabits old and undisturbed boreal forests, in an unbroken belt from Sweden and Finland across Russia to Japan, and is rarely seen to the south, only here and there, in the Carpathians (Slovakia/Ukraine/Romania/eastern Serbia) and Dinaric Alps (Croatia/Bosnia/western Serbia). Two years ago I screamed “UralOwlUralOwlUralOwl!!!”

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Horrible Hybrids

10,000 Birds

One year he was very excited when his female Hawaiian Goose hatched four healthy goslings, the first time he had managed to breed this species. My most memorable encounter with a non-wildfowl hybrid was some years ago in Finland, when I was taken to a Blackgrouse lek where two c**k Racklehahns were present.

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What is the State Bird of Alaska?

10,000 Birds

The Willow Ptarmigan, which is the most numerous, can also be found in Russia, Finland, Scandinavia, and Canada. Unlike other grouse species, the male Willow Ptarmigan remains with the female throughout the breeding season to help raise the chicks. The Willow Ptarmigan was officially designated in 1960, when Alaska entered the union.

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