This last month of the year, the owl influx to southern Finland is still going on and more great greys starting to occur. Tried for a couple of them, but failed to find them. Still no rodents about, so all of them are short stayers including one sitting 300m from my house without me knowing about it :-(
Spent a few days together with two hawk owls as well. Despite the poor light conditions, I managed to get a few action shots of one of them after many hours of waiting. Spent Christmas back in Norway, without much photographing going on, but bought me a new canon 30D which I hope will give some good results soonish.

24 November 2006

Last half of October was spent on the west coast of Norway in search for rare migrants. Gale force wind and rain/snow prevented good photo conditions. A White stork touring Norway and a Red phalarope which my friend and I found were the highlights.
Lately, southern Finland has been invaded by owls. The reason is probably that the prey populations have crashed completely in their breeding grounds. This has made good opportunities for finding owls at their dayroost, and since I arrived from Norway, I have spent almost every day out searching for my favourite group of birds with the Great grey owl beeing my ultimate reward - as it is my absolute favourite bird of the about 2000 species I've seen so far in my life. The weather though, has been horrible for photographing and forced me to use much higher iso than ideal.

October 2006

Gallery WildJays

Gallery WildBoreal

Last half of September and first half of October was spent in northern Sweden working as a fieldassistant for a Siberian jay project. Really nice forest reserve (Reivo NP) gave me opportunities to get close to some of the old-forest specials. Look at the gallery!