Silent autumn?

The autumn migration should be in full swing, but it is quiet out there. Despite good weather, very few birds are moving. Yesterday I spent half a day at the bird observatory in Hanko, but very few birds were logged. Normally there should be a good passage of wagtails and pipits, swallows and some finches, but now there was practically nothing.  And it has been like this all season.

Finland was hit by really cold and wet weather in June, at the peak of the breeding season, and lots of monitored birds were known to have lost their entire broods. Now it seems, that the populations may not have been able to compensate for these losses later in the season, and that the breeding output of the entire season is going to be record-low. Indications of this could already be sensed during late summer, when the results from the Constant Effort Ringing Sites started to come in.  There is still a remote chance, at least for some species, that the migration has been delayed owing to  late breeding attempts, but for many species the peak migration time is long gone, and it appears that many songbirds have had the “worst year ever”.

It will be interesting to see, if this generally low reproduction is reflected in numbers of birds further south along the migration routes, and if the effect can be seen in the numbers returning next spring.  Meanwhile, let’s hope for some decent migration for the coming weeks.

A flock of 19 nutcrackers must have made tens of attempts to migrate across the sea. Everytime they faced the open sea, they started to climb higher into the strong SW-wind, only to turn around and to get thrown back to the mainland. After 5 mins they appeared again, with exactly the same result. This went on from 8am. to 10 am. without a break. What a waste of energy, and probaly a waste of birds,too..