A successful strategy

We came here, to Inari--Saariselkä Kaunispää in Lapland, for this one bird.  It was a bird everyone wanted to see.  We arrived at a large tundra-like landscape and got out of the vans.  It was cold, windy and raining.  We walked around a bit and then I heard one of our guys whistle.  He waved his arms.  "Hey you guys, we're being called."  I didn't know what he found, but I was the closest to the spot he was calling from and I took off.  As I got close I slowed down.  It was too windy and rainy to shout over.  Suddenly, I saw what it was.  The Eurasian Dotteral (Eudromias morinellus).  Moss had stepped very near the nest and the bird popped up and ran off.  

This is how I first saw the bird.  I can't quite remember but I think the bird did make vocalizations.  He - it is a male bird - continued to distract those of us tromping over the tundra.  He was very close.  It had been banded by Finnature and it was the same bird that has been showing up here for at least a couple of years.  

We were all finishing with our photos and starting to leave.

Back on the nest!

I can't remember if it was Nigel or Anttu but one, or both of them, took turns explaining this bird's breeding strategy.  The female bird is somewhat more brightly colored.

The Eurasian Dotterel exhibits a polygynandrous breeding strategy, specifically with serial polyandry.   Female Eurasian dotterels arrive at breeding grounds and establish mating territories, competing with other females for access to males. Females are polyandrous, mating with multiple males, while males typically incubate the eggs and care for the young. This means the female lays multiple clutches, usually of three eggs, with different males and the male is left to raise the chicks from each clutch.  Our bird was sitting on three eggs.  

There are many on-line site where you can read about the Eurasian Dotteral and its mating strategies.  I'm not a Birds of the World subscriber, but for those who are it's probably a good deep dive.  eBird also has a good write-up with a good range map.  There are many others.  Anttu and Nigel explained that Eurasian Dotterels have a very long migration.

A recent scientific paper by two Norwegian researchers, Breeding Chronology and Mating System of the Eurasian Dotteral (Charadrius morinellus) was published in The Auk, and is available for free from The Digital Commons at the University of South Florida.  The Dotterel's genus was also recently changed from Charadruis to Eudromias. 

The departed female Dotterels can travel quite far to their next breeding sites.  The male will stay behind and take care of his offspring.  I am guilty of anthropomorphism, not always but occasionally, when it's something that really appeals to me.  This was one of those things.  One of the trip members was a wildlife biologist who had done a lot of work with birds, although they were not her area of expertise.  We often sat together in the rear seat of the van.  I admitted to my anthropomorphism and commented how content the male Dotterel appeared on his nest.  Contentment is thought of as a human emotion.  But, she agreed with me and went further with other examples of how research is opening doors where we are beginning to look at anthropomorphism differently.  Specifically about our Dotterel - sitting on that nest is what his whole goal in life is.  It is well understood that birds have hard lives.  This bird had flown thousands of miles precisely to do what he was doing on the day we saw him.  They deserve some contentment, which in this case, is being a successful breeder.  I was worried that every birder in Finland would make a visit to see this Dotterel and his nest would fail,  But Anttu disagreed saying he had been a successful breeder the past couple of years.  Finnature will, apparently, keep an eye on this.  Anttu is likely to be a part of this endeavor.  This made me feel somewhat better.   To worry less.  Just give me a chance to worry and I'll worry.

On the list of my five favorite birds I put the Eurasian Dotterel in my number two spot.  My number one bird is still coming up.  But, after looking at my photos again and writing this blog entry, I wish I had made the Dotterel my number one.  What a great bird.

Anyone for gulls and terns

It always seems that whenever I get to gulls and terns I become very serious.  In earlier days and posts I might not have even bothered to include gulls.  But ever since I became the proud owner of The Gull Guide North America  (2024) (it can be purchased for $29.85 from Thriftbooks) by Amar Ayyash and also heard him give his Keynote Address, Man and Gulls at the BWIAB conference this past Mother's Day, I feel differently about gulls.  That's a good thing.  My review, from last October, of Amar's book is here.  The You Tube Man and Gulls link here is Amar's Keynote Address at a different conference (1 hr, 5 mins long). 

Above and two below:  Mew Gull (Larus canus)?  No.  Short-billed Gull (Larus canus)?  Yes.  Common Gull (Larus canus)?  Yes.  Here is the Common Gull (Europe) and Short-billed Gull (North America).  As already discussed, what's in a name?  I'm surprised to write this, but I think it was my favorite gull of the trip, even though this is not what I was expecting going into the trip.  I think it's a very pretty gull.  I included the not great photo above, because I like photos of gulls on unexpected perches.  These are the only Common Gull photos I have and were taken in the same location as the Siberian Tit.  

Above and two below:  Little Gull (Hydrocoloeus minutus)

I thought this would be my favorite gull of the trip and I do like it very much.  We saw hundreds.  I took a lot of photos and tried hard to get good photos.  I selected these randomly.  The dark eye in the dark head conspired against me with so many different birds on this trip.  Of the three here, I think I like the middle photo best - a little gull flying past a nesting Whooper Swan (Cygnus cygnus), of which we also saw many nearly everywhere.

Above and below:  Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus), even though its head is brown.

You can see the tiny insects on the water's surface that Little and Black-headed gulls were feasting on.  I think of this gull as being like our Ring-billed Gull - it's everywhere, even in parking lots.

Above:  Black-legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridacyla) colony occupying an abandoned - by humans - fishing hut of some sort in Båtsfjord.  They occupied every ledge or other spaces on all sides of this building.  They were a raucous bunch.  

Kittiwake taking a break from the noise and competition.

Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus).  We saw it often.

Above and two below:  European Herring Gull (Larus argentatus)

I have always liked terns but find the Sternas difficult to identify.  A couple of years ago I added Cameron Cox's Terns of North America: A Photographic Guide (2023) to my bookshelf (currently 30% off with Princeton).  Earlier this spring I confused a Forster's Tern (Sterna forsteri) for a Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) on this blog and I was, after a few weeks, corrected by the eBird moderator.  Now I think Common Tern and Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) are a more confusing pair.  I think the 2nd edition Birds of Europe doesn't really help my confusion (pages 200-201) although I have considered that these two terns may have slightly different features in northern Europe.  I pulled Cox's book off the shelf to write this entry.  My photos aren't dreadful, but none are particularly good either.   

Two photos above and one below:  Common Term (Sterna hirundo).

The wide, white leading edge on the anterior wing is a key feature for me.  Arctic tern also has this, but it is not so prominent.  Having pointed this out in these photos, I can't find a photo in Cox's book also showing this.  The bill is also darker red than I would expect it to be. 

                 

Above and below:  Arctic Tern (Stern paradisaea).

This bird is from a noisy flock that were wheeling around the rocks in, (location Persfjord(?), in Norway.   I feel very comfortable with this ID because in these final days of the trip, we were only seeing Arctic Terns.  Also, I had the presence of mind to open Merlin and confirmed their vocalizations.

This seems like a very academic post to me.  I am completely unqualified to write a scholarly blog post about gulls and terns.

Siberian Tit

I'm not proceeding chronologically as I had hoped; the Smews are of order by a couple of days.  Coming back to a couple of birds that I don't want to forget and which deserve recognition.  

Grey Wagtail (Motacilla cinerea)

Wagtails are such great birds; I wish we had them in North America. This bird is somewhat difficult to find in Finland and has shown up here for the past couple of years.  While my photo is poor, it is still easy to see that Grey Wagtail is an attractive bird.  The location it has chosen to occupy, an out of season ski resort, led to a discussion on how good the Finns are at ski-jumping.  Legendary athletes like Matti Nykänen and Toni Nieminen are just two.  Matti Nykänen won five Olympic medals, four of them gold in the 1980s.  He had, however, a sad history.  Apparently, he was an alcoholic from the age of 14 and died at a relatively young age.  Finland continues to have a roster of both men and women who are successful ski jumpers.  The next Olympics will be the Winter games!  The Grey Wagtail was at the Ruka Ski Resort, near Kuusamo in Northern Ostrobothnia on May 27th.   

Above and two below:  Siberian Tit (Poecile cinctus)

I took about twenty images of the Siberian Tit from this perch.  They all look basically the same.  I randomly chose the three above.  Siberian Tit also sparked a little discussion for this is the North American named Gray-headed Chickadee.  Some European tits and North American chickadees have very similar appearances.  Others, like (European) Blue and Great tits, are quite different.  North Americans might be forgiven for referring to the Willow, Marsh or Somber tits as chickadees, only in a different country, for the congruence in their appearances.  Indeed, they occupy the same genus - Poecile.  Siberian Tit and Gray-headed Chickadee fall into this category.

Our tour leader, Nigel Redman, from Norfolk, England has enjoyed a lifetime of bird study, birding and bird guiding and in an earlier career was a book publisher with Helms Field Guides and Bloomsbury Publishers - to say the least, extremely knowledgable with an impressive career.  He was adamant that this bird is properly named Siberian Tit.  It is mostly and widely a Siberian breeder and occupies only a tiny range in Alaska.  "Gray-headed Chickadee" he added, with mock derision.  I half expected him to say that Gray was also spelled incorrectly.  This was, to a lesser degree, discussed with divers vs. loons and Common Merganser vs. Gooseander - of course, all in fun. This appealed to me because it is one of the aspects of birds and birding that I enjoy knowing and reading about.

Later a discussion about how the AOS is changing the names of birds that are named with eponyms. (I used the term honorifics - but honorifics is not exactly correct with a dictionary definition that implies or expresses high status, politeness or respect, such as titles like Sir, Madam, Dr., Lord, Lady, etc.).  After attending Amar Ayyash's Keynote Address titled Man and Gull at the BWIAB conference in Ohio just prior to leaving for this trip, I happened to mention that Bonaparte's Gulls nest almost exclusively in trees, preferring black spruce trees, and that one of the names being considered for renaming it might be Spruce gull.   Using the McCown's Longspur to Thick-billed Longspur name change (PDF in link) as an example, Nigel disagreed with the AOS endeavor to rename birds.  He added that he understood what they were trying to do, but that in doing it, all of the history on how the bird was discovered and described would be lost.  As it happens, Nigel also published The Eponym Dictionary of Birds.  I learned a new word - eponym - in this discussion.  I consider the renaming of birds (and also birding organizations) to be examples of the woke chasm that is impacting American politics and dividing the country - e.g. removing statues from public places, removing paintings, removing books from the library, renaming birds - to be a made-up construct used primarily by one political party to create the furor necessary to win elections.  (I think political journalists might place 'woke' the red meat category.  Woke was originally used with a very different meaning.)  In this way, I agree with Nigel, history will be lost.  On the other hand, what does the name Bonaparte's really tell us about a small, graceful and pretty gull.  Nothing.  It seems that carelessness and inattention to detail would play a greater role in losing bird history.  I editorialized to remember this discussion.  None of the extra parts of what I wrote above occurred in the van.

The Siberian Tit was seen in the late afternoon in an area called Kuusamo — Vasarankangas, Northern Ostrobothnia also on May 27th.  By the late afternoon the clouds had disappeared and, weatherwise, it was one of the most enjoyable afternoons of the whole trip.

Afternote:   Now I can't recall why I happened to mention Bonaparte's Gull in the discussion we had in the van.  All discussions seemed to occur in the van.  It is exclusively a North American gull and there are only a few records in Northern Europe.

From Wikipedia.org I copied the following from the Bonaparte's Gull (Chroicocephalus philadelphia) page:  "The species is named after Charles Lucien Bonaparte, a French ornithologist (and nephew to the former French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte) who spent eight years in America, contributing to the understanding of the taxonomy and nomenclature of birds there and elsewhere. Its genus name, Chroicocephalus, is a combination of the Greek words chroikos, an adjective form of chroa meaning "colour", and kephalē meaning "head". This refers to the dark heads that most gulls in this genus show during the breeding season. The specific epithet philadelphia is a Latinized adjective meaning "from Philadelphia", a reference to the location from which the type specimen was collected."[9] Sandrock, James; Prior, Jean C. (2014). The Scientific Nomenclature of Birds of the Upper Midwest. Iowa City, Iowa, US: University of Iowa Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-60938-225-4. Retrieved 15 December 2015.

This supports Nigel's assertion, that with the changing of bird names, the bird's history will be lost.  This said, it doesn't need to be lost.  It's easy to see where adding just a sentence leaves the whole history intact.  The Wikipedia page also shows a photo of a Bonaparte's gull nesting in a black spruce tree.  

There are Smews out there

Below, the same photo that appears on my title page.

Smew is probably the bird I wanted to see most on this trip.  So my heart sank when I looked way in the distance through my bins and camera viewfinder. For some reason, I imagined seeing them closer.  Of course, we had excellent looks through the spotting scope. Nevertheless, I did manage photos that will be memorable for me. This is at Inari-Mielikköjärvi lintutorni in Lapland, Finland.

Above and below:  female Smew

Above and next four:  male Smew

Above and two below:  Smew pair

All of the photos are very tightly cropped.  All things considered, I'm pleased with the sighting and with the photos.  The very next day we saw Smews again on a lake much closer and in great light,  As soon as the van parked and the door opened I was dismayed to watch them swim rapidly away.  When they reached the end of the lake they flew.  On my top five list, I put the Smew in the fourth spot.  It feels churlish now, but Smew would have made the top spot with closer looks and better photos.  It's a great bird.

Conveyance

Some exceptions to my strategy for upcoming entries may crop up, but my next posts will focus on a single species.  If there is a story to accompany the photos, I'll weave it in. 

I include the two photos below to bridge the narrative part of this blog entry and because there is no where else to put them.

Above and below:  What the heck is this?

When taking the photo above I committed an unintentional, but significant, faux pax on a birding trip.  This is, I accidentally bumped into the 'photographer' on the trip just as he was lined up for his shot. Yikes, the look!  It certainly did not win me a new friend.  

They look like black and white photos.  I don't know why.  It was not a black and white bird.  The ground was not black and white.  I don't even recall that it was a gray morning. We saw this bird in Kuusamo-Lakkisaari in Northern Ostrobothnia.This is Rustic Bunting (Emberiza rustica) and my photos of it go to the heart of one of my assertions below.  I almost deleted them but decided against it because they are the only two I have and this is a hard bird to see in Finland.  We also saw the Little Bunting (Emberiza pusilla), another difficult bunting to see in Finland, but I didn't get photos of it.  Aside from the already discussed Ortolan Bunting, the other buntings we saw, (Common) Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus), Lapland Bunting (Calcarius lapponicus), our Lapland Longspur, and Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis) also went without photos, the latter two because I was on the wrong side of the van.  Read on. 

____________________

The following narrative is about our travel.  For this trip there was a lot of travel in [technically] two 9 passenger vehicles.  It was primarily a listing trip. There were plenty of photo opportunities, but many were often not conducive to good or careful photos. (If anyone reads my blog with any regularity, by now I must be famous for my poor photos - examples above and elsewhere.  Nevertheless, I am always trying to improve).  It was not a photography trip, so that part was okay for me.  

If I have a single complaint about the trip, it would be the cramped vehicles in which we spent so much time.  The cumbersome loading and unloading often tested my patience.  A couple of trip participants had significant mobility issues.  I always seemed to end up behind them.  Traveling in over-crowded vehicles does not lend itself to good trip stories, only to trip complaints and, worse, conflict.  When it's obvious that the trip is good, who wants to be the person in the back seat complaining?  Unfortunately, on two occasions, I had to complain.  I'm glad I did.  It was the right thing to do.  But it's still unpleasant. After the first few days we all became, more or less, accommodated to our method of conveyance, but my ears were attuned to the occasional complaint that was mumbled or whispered.  These mumblings were not meant for me to hear but they confirmed my insights. Considering the vehicles that were used, by my calculation the trip was oversold by three persons.  About halfway through one trip participant left the trip for personal reasons.  After her departure, in one seat, in one vehicle, it was easy to experience how it would have been had there only been ten people on the trip instead of thirteen.  There were also a couple of other negative externalities, i.e unavoidable situations that affected everyone, the specifics of which are not necessary here, but which complicated the situation.  

My blog is obscure to say the least.  I get quite a few monthly visitors, but this is secondary to having - as I celebrated earlier - now over 600 posts.  No one on the trip, or elsewhere for that matter, knows that I keep this blog.  For this reason, other than naming the tour company and the guides, I do not include the names of the other participants.  I think of blogs as I think of podcasts.  They are a dime a dozen.  As nearly as I can tell the topics of politics, cooking, gardening and nature and birding, with photography being the focus, are the main topics.  A blog with so much writing, such as mine is, is not tops on anyone's list.  On the one in a million chance that someone connected to this trip would find my blog, I think they would read the truth in what I have written.  

I keep this blog as a fun hobby.  Why is it important to write about travel discomfort?  I write about it for my own memory, but also to inform others - should they bother to read any of this.  Next time you are considering a booking, ask questions about things that are important to you.  It may not involve travel comfort at all, but might be something else you care about.

Finally, I will add that if I have counted correctly, this was my 16th international birding trip.  To this I will add that on this trip I was, by far, the least well-traveled of anyone.  I had gone into the trip thinking I was well-prepared, but it was as if I had only made it halfway around the block.  I have spent some time thinking about this. There are things to consider on every trip and things to forgive on every trip.  Bottom line, this was a great trip with great guides, great birds, great scenery, great hotels, great food (all these greats are not exaggerated) with the side effect of uncomfortable travel.  Would I go on this trip again? Unequivocally, yes.  But I now have more information to inform myself better for planning my next trip.      

The other reason I share this information is one of my other hobbies.  I use this blog to practice my narrative writing.  This entry will probably be edited over and over.

Grouse

It's becoming more difficult to tell which day it is which even though we are still in the early days of the trip.  We have left the Finlandia Airport Hotel and are now staying at the Hotel Club Kuusamon Tropikki near Kuusamo.  This is very nice and new resort-style hotel.   It has a golf course, a couple of lakes and indoor pool as well as kids things.  The dining room was large and the buffet meals were excellent.  

Side note:  I have noticed on other trips that involve time-zone changes that the events I have in my smart phone calendar also change to the current time-zone.  Everything on our phones is synced to the satellites monitoring our presence and keeping time for us.  To me, this seems like a failure of smart phones, but it's not just smart phones.  It was also true for my camera.  When I downloaded my photos none of the times recorded for each photo are accurate.  I had never noticed this before.  Early on I had to sit down and go through my camera menu to find a solution for a problem that had arisen.  I think everyone knows what a pain this is.  I intentionally do not have my camera synced with my smart phone.  But somewhere along the way I have a feature turned on that probably should not be.  Now that I am home, something to solve later.

All this past winter I noticed that my Belle Isle photos frequently downloaded out-of-order to my computer.  I didn't bother paying attention to it then.  But, now that I am writing this blog and trying to follow chronologically I am having trouble remembering what came first.  The time stamp on each photo is of no help to me and I may not be able to trust the dates either.  I changed sim cards half way through the trip to avoid any catastrophic mishaps.  It's time to consult the trustworthy trip checklist.

Back to the trip:  It was near Kuusamo that we began our grouse searches.

Willow Ptarmigan.  

I have unidentifiable photos of the female Willow Ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus) as well but not worth including here.  We saw the bird in this plumage only in this location.  We saw it many times in its tundra habitat with its red-brown head and neck and the rest of the plumage completely white.  This Willow Ptarmigan was seen on the morning of 5/26 when we were on a search for Western Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus).  After about an hour we gave up this search and were loading back into the vans when a big male Capercaillie flew across the road about fifty feet in front of our parked vans.  Only a few of us saw it.       

The following five photos were taken on an after dinner grouse search the evening of Tuesday, the 27th - our final night in this location.  We left around 9:00 pm and drove several unpaved rural road.  We did indeed find grouse.   

But first we saw Mountain Hare.  This is a big and charming rabbit which we saw every day, everywhere.

Above and below:  Finally, a Black Grouse landed in a field just adjacent to our vehicles,  It startled and  flew up to the spuce tree for a silhouetted image.  Both photos were taken through filthy van windows.

And then grouse seemed to show up everywhere along the road.  We saw both female black grouse and female Western Capercaillies.

 

Above:  Believe it or not, this is a female Capercaillie.

Startled male Black Grouse flying off.

Our final male Black Grouse landed in a field just ahead of our cars.  We opened the van door in hopes of getting unobstructed views.  But, the van in front of us startled it when its door was opened and I caught this horrible inflight photo.   Can still tell what it is.

The next morning, in a different location, we saw Black Grouse distantly on their lek. 

Finally, you'll remember Bernard Raynaud of Red-flanked Bluetail fame.  It seems fitting to end this post with his email sign-off image of the male Western Capercaillie in its classic pose.

Wow!