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Snipes

 

Although the weather was quite rainy I went on a round of Tartumaa polders. The wader hot spots of Valguta, Rämsi and Aardla polders got checked. There is no water in the Rämsi polder this year and so there were not many birds to be seen. In the couple of more watery areas in the Aardla polder there were some tens of sandpipers and ruffs, and some godwits and snipes too among the others. But the Valguta polder is steadily the best birding area in south-eastern Estonia at present. All parts are full of duck, grebe, gull and tern families and numerous waders stay in the area – pipers, dunlins, ruffs, snipes and others. But searching for waders in the high grass is not easy at all. Only when the birds are scared into flight by some predator the real number of birds becomes evident. When for instance we had stayed at Valguta for some hours already it seemed that the number of common snipes (Gallinago gallinago) in the area was maybe 30, but 70 birds flew up unexpectedly from one spot only. If with great effort several hundred birds get counted then there may be some thousand instead in reality, in the high vegetation the birds are simply not discovered.