We took a short trip to Finland this weekend to give a talk to Bongariliitto, the group of hardcore Finnish twitchers. We were met at the airport on Friday evening by Pertti Uusivuori. One of his many roles is with Birdlife International and as he took us and Antero out for a delicious dinner at the Fishmarket restaurant in central Helsinki, he entertained us with tales of his birding around the world. Antero took us back to his home where we stayed with him and his partner Annika Forsten, who had kindly arranged our visit.
The next day dawned wet and gloomy but we had time for some birding on the island of Suomenlinna in the morning before our talk. This island just offshore from the city of Helsinki was once a military fortress and is now a UNESCO Heritage site. It is also holds small numbers of wildfowl including handsome drake Goosanders and Goldeneye, as well as Wigeon. A White-tailed Eagle soared overhead sending the gulls up in a screaming cloud. Unfortunately the rain became torrential so we returned to the city and our lecture date, not wanting to be too wet and bedraggled for our talk.
The lecture hall at Helsinki University was already filling as we arrived in time to hear a talk by our friend Dick Forsman on the identification of Eleanora’s Falcon. Naturally his talk was in Finnish but we could still enjoy his photographs in any language, while our new friend Pertti helped us with the key points of translation.
Then it was our turn, and we hopefully entertained the Finns with our talk on The Biggest Twitch, trying to speak as slowly and clearly as possible in English, always difficult when we get so excited about the tale of our adventure. We’d taken some Biggest Twitch calendars and were very pleasantly surprised how enthusiastically the audience hoovered them all up – perhaps we should have filled our luggage with calendars rather than warm clothing! The evening was rounded off with food, drink and plenty of bird talk in a local restaurant – who says Finns don’t let their hair down! It was great to catch up with two more friends, Hannu Jannes, an outstanding birder who’s been a friend for years and has helped us in several countries, and Mika, who we met last year and showed us such great birds in Estonia.