looduskalender.ee

Only five days ago there were nearly 500 barn swallows weaving around above the reed beds in the morning, because the weather stayed cool and finding food elsewhere was a thankless quest. The cloudless morning of May 15 again promised summer warmth. Today quite a number of sedge warblers were singing here, nearby a couple of great reed warblers and reed warblers crackled their raspy melodies, a little further away an enthusiastic bittern trumpeted. There are plenty of nightingales in the shoreline shrubs, and their clapping dominated all. But still a rosefinch could be heard from the forest border and a garden warbler, and from a willow bush even a penduline tit.

Marsh harriers made low overflights stalking prey, but in general bird life at the lake was peaceful – the mute swans were incubating on their nests, nearby coots splattered and noisy terns were busy, and in the water crested grebes presented their comical, synchronised pair dance. In the background a snipe neighed. Suddenly three gadwalls who had been settling their relations went quiet as a large shadow slipped across the water. But the osprey’s interest was only focused on fish of which there is plenty here, because after barely five minutes of circling the eagle fell abruptly towards the water. The quite large prey from the successful dive was held securely in the claws of both feet and the fisherman quickly left.

Just then calls of geese were heard, and soon the first chain came into sight. The flights of the flocks, greatly dominated by greater whitefronted geese, lasted two hours. Altogether some 2300 geese arrived from the fields to the secure resting place in the middle of the lake. The lively calling of barnacle geese on migration just above their heads didn’t interest the water-dwellers. The favourable weather will stay and bird enthusiasts can watch the slowly receding spring migration of the geese every morning. Some groups of geese are in no hurry to leave us.

But other birds do hurry: some crow couples already have their young out of the nest, but to start with they stay quietly and in hiding in the tree crowns around their hatching place. The calls of starling chicks begging for food grow louder day by day.