looduskalender.ee

 

February 27th

 

The Sõrve bird station diary tells us that the first migrants are arriving already. I headed for Saaremaa myself. Since finally a quiet and sunny day occurred in  the windy and snowy period I decided to spend the time a little more usefully and check locations where green woodpeckers have been observed earlier rather than only drive around. The green woodpecker has almost disappeared from mainland Estonia; only on Saaremaa it can still be seen regularly. But even here there are steadily fewer of them and for instance only one observation was submitted to the data bases last year. During the day I visited nearly 25 of the one-time locations for the green woodpecker and as an unpleasant surprise did not find a single green woodpecker! Is this species really already gone from Saaremaa too? Or was it too early to look for it? The best time to find green woodpeckers is actually in about one month’s time but with pleasant weather they should show up in February too. In one place a woodpecker called like a green woodpecker but since the bird did not show up and the rather shrill laughing call of the green woodpecker is very similar to that of the black woodpecker it is not acceptable to identify a green woodpecker only on the strength of its call. That location and of course all other places visited today must be inspected again in March-April, maybe I have better luck then.

In Kuressaare I once more checked the reed banks at the Roomassaare water treatment plant’s outflow pipes. Even with severe cold there is open water here and interesting winterers can be discovered. While a wagtail was busy here in January, today a water rail caught my eye among the coots and mallards. It is a rare winter bird here. In general a bird with such a secretive way of life is seldom seen, even now it disappeared quickly into the reeds. The water rail is the 115th bird species on my 2012 year list.

Because the weather in the evening was quite calm and clear there was reason to hope that the owls would begin to call. I visited some owl sites that I knew from earlier years and quite right, the year list was supplemented – I managed to hear two boreal owls and two tawny owls too. Surprisingly I got the tawny owl on my year list only now, it is after all a quite common bird. The boreal owl however is a somewhat more difficult species. Good that I got it early on without too much trouble. My 2012 year list now has 117 bird species.