Finland & Norway #2 – Oulu
Day 3 (21 May): We drove on to Oulu, stopping at a roadside café decorated with a large number of bells and doing some birding on the way.
After dinner, we set off for an evening with owls. A local expert took us to the nest of a Great Grey Owl that he was monitoring while the female bird stared at us with her yellow eyes from a nearby birch tree. Our ringer friend was ringing a brood of Tengmalm’s Owls as part of his on-going studies of this species. The five chicks were quickly, measured, ringed and popped back in the box.
We saw five owls that evening, a Great Grey Owl, a Tengmalm’s Owl, a Short-eared Owl, a European Pygmy Owl and a Hawk Owl: quite an experience.