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 Crane in “lark winter”.

 

When I peered out sleepily from behind the curtain in the morning at Sõrve bird station it was no pleasant sight that met my eyes - there was nothing to be seen, just thick fog. I decided to go on sleeping, things might get better later in the day. But I wasn’t allowed to sleep for long: at 6.30 a crane decided to circle above the station, calling loudly. And so the 120th bird species came into my 2012 species list. During the day cranes were heard and seen in several more places; the first arrivals were here.

 

The hoped-for good migrant day at Sõrve säär didn’t materialise because the fog did not deign to lift. Visibility in the morning was at best only 50 metres and even in the later half of the day birds could be identified at only 200-300 metres at most. In dense fog no migration took place but migrants “rained down“ from their journey were to be seen everywhere. New arrivals mistle thrushes, robins and meadow pipits were added to the earlier comers blackbirds, starlings, chaffinches, skylarks, lapwings, stock doves and wood pigeons.

 

Among waterfowl Bewick’s swan, greylag goose, bean goose and shelduck increased my year list. Among the others I found a whooper swan and a bean goose with neck rings, but in the thick fog I didn’t manage to read the codes on the rings.

 

Hopefully this swan and goose flock will stay in the same place several days more and with a little better weather I will maybe get the rings read at long last. Of new waders oystercatcher was added to my year list – two birds hunched on the Loode shore on an ice bank. At Sõrve bird station a woodcock was already flying around in the evening but I didn’t see it myself. Today 7 new species were added in my 2012 name list, altogether there are now 126.