Translation: Liis

September 22nd

 

In early morning the fog was thick on the eastern shore of Lämmijärve and there were clearly less bird movements than in the previous days. When the fog lifted the migration got going at full speed but we „only“ succeeded to count a little more than 140 000 migrants this day. In eight days 3,3 million birds have come across the Lämmijärve. Is the migration of chaffinches coming to an end for this time? Russia is large and wide, room for plenty of chaffinches there. Maybe another migration wave will come? As before the Mehikoorma observations can be seen in the...

 Translation: Liis

 

The Mehikoorma "bird station" (Photo: Uku Paal)

 

It was a slightly quieter day at Mehikoorma today, we managed to count altogether about 330 000 passerines. Only a week ago such a day would have caused  excitement for a long time but now we are already used to considerably larger daily totals and today seemed even a little boring. In six days at least 2,5 million migrant birds have come across the Lämmijärve, the great...

Photo: Arne Ader

 Translation: Liis

Chaffinch

 

At Mehikoorma again to observe. Today conditions for watching were clearly poorer than yesterday – cloudy and darkish in the morning, in between hot sunshine and the air shimmered, quite strong wind. But I still managed to count >400 000 passerines. During three days at least 1,2 million birds have crossed the Lämmijärve! The majority of the migrants...

 Translation: Liis

 

Although the weather was supposed to be on the poor side I still went to observe birds at Mehikoorma at Lämmijärve lake. The moderate adverse wind did not disturb the birds much and from Cape Pnevo a surprising number of passerines started to cross the lake. At times the whole sky was filled with dots. In the course of six hours I managed to count nearly 300 000 migrant birds. Because of the long distance (2 km) it was mostly not possible to determine the species but the majority of the migrants were probably chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs), in the throng were also many tits, thrushes, swallows, finches and smaller passerines....