As you can see I am well travelled this month!! Our trip to Tallinn and St Petersburg was an amazing
experience on all levels – birding, football, transport, architecture, history,
food etc. We flew to Tallinn and it is an excellent base to explore Estonia and
well worth a visit at any time of the year. Mid June is particularly good as
there is virtually no night at all. We had four nights en route to Russia and
two more on the way back. I squeezed in a couple of hours birding at the
reserve closest to the city – Paljasaare and this gave some good birds, but the
parks were also interesting as the default thrush is
fieldfare and they gave
excellent close up views.
We also
visited the Estonian open air folk museum and saw more
spotted flycatchers in
two hours than I have seen in the UK in ten years.
The highlights for urban birding in Tallinn
were
white wagtail, goosander, fieldfare, and tree sparrow.
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| Looking for food from tourists |
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| Ran across the path in front of me |
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| Female goosander in the local park |
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| Default thrush - they were everywhere! |
A day trip to
Helsinki added a
wheatear along the waterfront in a distinctly urban environment, but the
most surprising thing about Helsinki was that the default gull was
common gull;
they seemed to be everywhere – even in the pedestrian areas hoovering up food.
Common
and Arctic terns breed on the terminal roof in Tallinn
but little tern eluded me.
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| These kite birds and nets were supposed to stop gulls coming in and stealing food from the market...... |
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| ..... they failed |
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| Scavenging common gulls.... |
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| ....with one obligatory herring gull |
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| Common gull |
Paljasaare had a
good variety of species and provided a life first
common rosefinch, plus
water
rail, green sandpiper, sedge warbler, whitethroat, and a male red-backed
shrike. The variety of birds is helped by the variety of habitat. The
common rosefinch was singing from a telephone wire and was easy to see from the tower thoughtfully built by the Soviet Navy and now a very useful birding point. Apparently it is excellent in winter as well, if a trifle cold with limited daylight.
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| Salt water bay |
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| Woody scrub |
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| Soviet era tower, now a bird hide |
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| View from the tower |
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| Reedbed |
The folk park added
spotted flycatcher, pied flycatcher, great spotted
woodpecker, black redstart and wood warbler.
All in all some nice birds and the memory of sitting outside in a cafe
watching
swifts screaming overhead will stay with me.
St Petersburg proved more bird free and I was less inclined
to use binoculars as the place was full of security due to the World Cup. We took a Metro and a bus to the summer palace
at Peterhof and this gave us more fieldfares, white wagtail and spotted
flycatchers, plus good views of red squirrels. If you want birds visit Tallinn,
if you want history and museums St Petersburg has more.
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| We're on the path it is beside the railing |
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| No worries at all |
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| White wagtail |
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| Church of the spilled blood |
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| St Petersburg stadium ready to party |
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| Peterhof palace and fountains |
You have to have a few touristy ones to prove we were actually there!
A quick turn around and we were off to Bolton. We visited
Etherow Country Park but we were well into July and birds were hard to see. We
did get the Egyptian goose and an awful lot of mandarin duck which breed freely
there. Elton Reservoir was a nice walk as usual but very quiet birdwise.
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Mandarin drake in eclipse plumage
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| Mandarin duck |
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| Egyptian goose |
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| And again |
We stopped off in the Isle of Man on the way home for four nights. I have
never been there but I would go back as there are some nice birds to be had and
lots of stunning scenery. What impressed me was the way in which we left crowds
of people, found a nice walk and had it all to ourselves within five minutes of
the car park/town centre. There are four good seabird colonies – fulmar,
kittiwake, guillemot, razorbill, shag, cormorant, stonechat, meadow and rock
pipit were all seen. It is an excellent
place to see chough – even ten minutes drive from Douglas. Peel is excellent
for black guillemot and there are terns at Point of Ayre. We looked long and
hard for little tern but apparently they did not have a good year. Four days
provided 47 species without going birding so to speak, but chough was the
highlight.
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| Herring gull colony at Port Erin |
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| Point of Ayre had breeding ringed plover and oystercatcher |
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| Calf of Man, chough country and no tourists!! |
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| Marine Drive, five minutes from Douglas, chough on the road and no people! |
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| Maughold cliff path, ten minutes from Ramsey and it was empty. |
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| Cliffs behind Peel, did have a few walkers. |
140: Spotted flycatcher
141: White wagtail
142: Water rail
143: Black redstart
144: Sedge warbler
145: Wood warbler
146: Pied flycatcher
147: Red-backed shrike
148: Common rosefinch
149: Manx shearwater
150: Mandarin duck
151: Egyprian goose
152Chough
Bangor West
68: Manx shearwater
Belfast WOW
89: Pochard
