Friday, April 15, 2016

Helsinki - birdsong in the bogs

A very short post which I’m writing in Helsinki Airport. Here, birdsong is played as background noise in the lavatories. What a wonderful innovation, and good for testing your knowledge, too. I did pooly, it must be said, recognizing only a Robin (Erithacus rubecula) and failing utterly to have any sense of what the other two species I heard were. Both were passerines, but beyond that I'm clueless.


This was such a short and intense visit (only the morning and lunch) that I hadn’t bothered bringing my binoculars, and I particularly love it when recognizable unexpected species pitch up in these circumstances. On the drive to the airport there was a small flock of Barnacle Geese (Branta leucopsis) by a stretch of water near the harbor and a pair of Fieldfares (Turdus pilaris) in some trees. Both of these (remarkably, in the latter case) were my first for the year. Nice.

Helsinki in the sun today at lunchtime.

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