Two weeks ago my husband and I returned from a visit with friends in Finland.  Today I’ll share some of the beautiful scenery and tell you a bit about the country.

Finland is a Nordic country located between Scandinavia and Russia.  For centuries it was alternately ruled by its two powerful neighbors, Sweden and Russia.  This year Finland celebrates 100 years of independence, released by Russia in 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Though it’s the eighth largest country in Europe, Finland is the most sparsely populated in the European Union.  One quarter of its 5.5 million people live in metro Helsinki with the rest spread out among towns and country, mostly in the south.

We stayed with our friends Erkki and Helena at their summer cottage on Lake Rikkavesi (very sparsely populated; located at blue arrow) and at their home in Joensuu, a town of 58,000.

Their summer cottage consists of three buildings — sleeping space, living space, and an outhouse.  It’s semi-rugged with electricity, a wood burning sauna (everyone has a sauna in Finland!), lake water for washing not drinking, and a composting toilet.  Middle of the night bathroom visits required walking outdoors, but no problem. It is never dark in July.

Most of my photos below were taken at Lake Rikkavesi (check the captions for more information).  Click on any photo to see a larger version of the slideshow.

Beautiful Finland. The land of 188,000 lakes.

(photos by Kate St. John)

During my recent trip to England and Finland I was happy to see lots of new Life Birds but was amazed at how many birds were the same at home and abroad.

Some are on both continents because they were introduced — rock pigeons, house sparrows, starlings, ring-necked pheasants and mute swans. But many in the duck, gull and tern families occur in both places because they flew there on their own. There are usually different subspecies on each continent(*) but in a few cases the exact same species is everywhere.

Here are four such birds, easily found in North America and Europe. There are no subspecies so if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.

Above, I saw northern shovelers (Anas clypeata) in England where they’re simply called “shovelers.” I was amazed to learn they’re the same bird everywhere though I should have known. They breed across northern America and Eurasia.

Red-breasted mergansers (Mergus serrator) breed in northern America and Eurasia and travel far on migration (for a merganser). They spend the winter at both salt and fresh water so it’s no wonder they can change continents.

Caspian terns (Hydroprogne caspia) are the largest tern on earth and found on every continent except Antarctica, though their distribution is scattered on coasts and in the interior. In western Pennsylvania they’re at Presque Isle in the spring.

And finally, great black-backed gulls (Larus marinus) are coastal and Great Lakes birds found on both sides of the North Atlantic. As the largest member of the gull family this bird is so powerful that it eats smaller gulls, even adults!

When you see a great black-backed gull at the beach this summer, consider this:  It’s the same bird everywhere.

(Great black-backed gull photo by shellgame on Flickr, Creative Commons license; click on the image to see the original. All other photos by Steve Gosser)

(*) p.s. A few examples of different subspecies between North America and Europe: green-winged teal, sandwich tern, barn swallow, barn owl, peregrine falcon.

My husband and I joke that we’re “Bird and Word.”   I’m addicted to birds.  He spends time with poetry, literature and art.  On our recent trip to England we made sure to pursue our dreams.  While Rick spent time in London visiting museums and the haunts of great poets, I went on a three day Oriole Birding tour of Norfolk County’s fens and forests.

The Norfolk Summer Breeders and Late Migrants tour on 28-30 June was great!  Seven of us joined bird guide Ashley Saunders for a tour that included 114 species (88 were Life Birds) despite relentless wind and rain on the first day.

From the moment I arrived at Kings Lynn railway station to the end of the tour, everything was taken care of:  transportation, meals, lodging and birds. We stayed at the Blue Boar Inn in Great Ryburgh where we enjoyed excellent accommodations, delicious food, and cool birds just a short walk away at the River Wensum.  Every day we spent 10+ hours in the field but our schedule included pauses for elevenses, lunch and 4pm tea, all packed in the van so we could eat outdoors and not miss the birds.  How civilized!

Ashley tailored the tour for the weather, recent rarities, and our wish lists.  He’s excellent at finding birds and making sure everyone sees them.  The advantage is that you see even more this way.  While we paused for a lingering look at Dartford warblers a rare pair of European honey buzzards flew over.  Woo hoo!

I saw all the birds I wrote about in the past few weeks except, of course, the birds of Finland.  And there were bonuses: I had never seen a chaffinch, an extremely common bird, so Ashley paused at a bird feeder to show me a brightly colored male.  Wow!  Click here to see a male chaffinch, about the size of a house finch.

Here’s Ashley’s summary of our Norfolk tour on the Oriole Birding website.

If you’re visiting England, I highly recommend Oriole Birding for great looks at the best birds in the U.K.  You’ll also enjoy Oriole’s international tours departing from the U.K. for birding sites around the world. Check out their website by clicking on their logo above.

In case you’re curious, here’s my list of Best Birds.  They were very hard to choose:

• Eurasian spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia)
• Eurasian hobby (Falco subbuteo) — excellent looks at this peregrine-like falcon
• Black-tailed godwits (Limosa limosa) — beautiful rusty color
• Ruff (Calidris pugnax) in breeding plumage, far better than the non-breeding ruffs rarely seen in the U.S. in the winter
• Bearded reedling (Panurus biarmicus shown above)
• Great bitterns (Botaurus stellaris)
• European nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus)
• European honey buzzard (Pernis apivorus)
• A family of little owls (Athene noctua)
• And, near the Blue Boar Inn, superb views of a barn owl (Tyto alba) coursing over a field with rooks (Corvus frugilegus) wheeling in the background.  Without a doubt this was my visual highlight of the trip.
• Last species on the tour: a family of peregrine falcons high up at their nest site in Kings Lynn.

(bearded reedling photo from Wikimedia Commons, Oriole Birding logo from the Oriole Birding website. Click on the images to see the originals)

p.s. Oriole Birding was named for the Eurasian golden oriole (Oriolus oriolus), a rare bird that used to nest in poplar plantations in Norfolk County.  The golden oriole’s nesting requirements are so specific that when the old poplars fell down, the birds did not come back.

My interest in the Birds of Europe was inspired by a two week trip my husband and I made to England and Finland.  In the days ahead I’ll tell you more.  Meanwhile, here’s one of my favorite sightings in Finland illustrated with my very bad photos.

Last Thursday afternoon I took a walk along the paved pedestrian trail in Helsinki’s Töölönlahti Park.  I was enjoying close looks at arctic terns, great crested grebes, Eurasian coots, and barnacle geese(*) when a huge flock of mew and black-headed gulls swirled above me in alarm.

The gulls were the pursuing a bird of prey that quickly landed next to the sidewalk and stood on its prey the way our red-tailed hawks do in public.  The hawk was holding a wood pigeon and panting as it watched people, dogs and bicycles go by.  It was an adult male northern goshawk!

In North America, goshawks avoid cities and people so I was stunned and pleased to see one so close.  However the bird’s appearance confused me a bit.  In North America, juvenile goshawks have yellow eyes while adults have red eyes.  In Europe this bird’s bright yellow-orange eyes indicate he’s an adult.

His size fooled me, too.  He’s so large that I thought he was female.  The next day I learned from my bird guide, Jari Laitasalo, that male and female adult goshawks have different head plumage in Finland.  Females have very pale heads so this bird’s dark head indicates he’s male.

Goshawks eat birds(**) but their favorite prey in northern Europe is the wood pigeon.  Jari explained that the abundance of prey in Helsinki’s city parks has drawn goshawks and eagle owls to nest in the city center.

Not wanting to disturb this awesome bird I stood far back to take these photos with my cellphone and binoculars.  After 15 minutes he was still on the prey so I gave up and walked back to the hotel. Goshawks have more stamina that I do.

(photos by Kate St. John)

*  Barnacle geese were introduced in Finland and are now urban pests in Helsinki.
** The Finnish word for goshawk is kanahaukka:  kana=chicken, haukka=hawk.