Arctic Travelogue -Scattered notes from a recent trip up to Kuusamo, Finnish Lapland and Finnmark, Norway first week of June.

Day1. Left home on the Finnish S coast in the morning and drove all day, reaching Kuusamo by the evening, a drive of 950 km. No time for stops, so not much along the way, except for a heavy thunderstorm, with hail the size of ping-pong balls, a second-year Moose, an early Lapland Ringlet (Erebia embla) butterfly and two different Merlins.

Day2. Birding all day – and night – around Kuusamo. It is a fantastic year for owls in this part of Finland, with record numbers of breeding Tengmalm’s and Hawk Owls. Voles are abundant too, and one could see them running across the roads here and there, several per day. The first day produced a lot of goodies, all spontaneously found while birding, except for the Ural Owl, which was a “twitch”: Hazel Grouse, Red-necked Phalarope, a fledged brood of Hawk Owls with attending parents, Rustic and Little Buntings, Black Woodpecker and Wryneck, both responding well to my whistling, Great Grey Shrike bringing a vole to its nest, a female Ural Owl with chicks (the first confirmed breeding for Kuusamo of this more southerly species for at least four decades!), several Short-eared Owls and more Lapland Ringlets.

Day3. Still in Kuusamo, where the day took off with a brood of fledged Two-barred Crossbills. Shortly after I visited a nearby nest of Black Woodpecker, where both parents brought food to the nearly fledged young.

Adult female Black Woodpecker feeding male and female chicks.

Later on a male Pine Grosbeak, a pair of Merlins by the nest, a brood of newly-hatched Green Sandpipers with both adults present too (normally the females migrate south soon after hatching). To my surprise, the male and the female had very different plumages, something I have to look up in the literature. Also spent some time with a flock of Common Crossbills (extremely numerous this year) feeding on spruce cones on the ground on a recent clear-felling. Some immature males were incredibly colourful, bright yellow and red, looking like misplaced tropical mini-parrots.

Common Crossbill, 2nd cal yr male -the mini-parrot

Day4. A rather slow day exploring the vast wilderness areas of N Kuusamo, checking some raptor territories. One of the Golden Eagle nests was occupied and held two healthy-looking chicks, probably 3-4 weeks old. Also saw one of the adults high above the nest, which is quite rare to see, as they normally keep away from humans. The last Calypso orchids of the season were still in good shape, but most had withered by now.

Day5. Left Kuusamo in the morning heading north. After a drive of some 100km a pair of adult Golden Eagles were hunting together, not far from the main road, and I managed to get some record shots of both birds. Two hours later I was standing below a Golden Eagle’s nest, which I found some 10 years ago. The nest was not occupied, but showed clear signs of attendance earlier in the season. Rushing on further north, logging in a road-side Hawk Owl and a very northerly Roe Deer as I went, until I made a stop at a familiar bog, known from before as a good birding site. Before the car had stopped I could see a familiar flight-path high up in the sky –displaying Jack Snipe! Jumped out and found two different Jack Snipes doing their wide-ranging circuits above the bog, stopping every now and then to do the “trampling” in mid-air. The wind was too strong to hear the birds, but their display flight is unique and easy to recognize, once you are familiar with it. As I got even further north I came into the more hilly country with open tundra and fjells (gently sloping mountains) –Rough-legged Buzzard country. I checked 8 nests known to me from before, and 5 had one bird in the nest while the other one was on guard nearby, a fairly good result. There had been lots of lemmings only a few weeks earlier, around snow-melting, but now they had dispersed, and the only thing I could see was big dark voles, probably Root Voles (a.k.a. Tundra Vole) Microtus oeconomus, which were common particularly in boggier places. At around midnight (sun still shining!) I checked another Golden Eagle site, now in a cliff, and saw an adult on the nest feeding two white chicks. On a nearby bog the Long-tailed Skuas had a rest, while Short-eared Owls where hunting actively.

Adult Long-tailed Skua at midnight

The following days were variable, with one still and sunny day, followed by high winds and torrential rain the next day. This is typical of the weather of the far north, where hot continental air meets the cold air from the Arctic Ocean. If you are lucky enough to get fine weather up here, enjoy it for as long as it lasts, it could be over within hours!

This male Willow Grouse let me approach to within two metres of it, and even then it just slowly walked to the side!