Sometime back in the ‘60s, the psychologist Abe Maslow made a name for himself by popularizing what came to be known as “positive psychology”, kind of an upbeat response to the traditional and entrenched focus in the field on pathology and dysfunction that all started with the theories of Sigmund Freud. Dr. Maslow coined such concepts as the human hierarchy of needs and self-actualization and was probably the father of self-help and pop psychology, and I say that with all due respect. He also talked about how for humans, living at its best came in the form of the peak experience.
One could make a case that the first day of this trip had been a peak experience for many of us, from the hard-core birders to the more casual in our group; it had been that extraordinary. Think about it: three different species of owl – an iconic species rarely seen by most people in the first place – showing up in various locales of the Finnish countryside, a place maybe not that spectacular but strange and exotic nonetheless to these American eyes, and most of those birds newly hatched young, to boot. Call it Owlpalooza, for lack of a better term, and don’t overlook how jet-lag may have played a part in enhancing our responses to the occasion. Also call it very special and a tough act to follow, though I don’t think anyone was ready to go home just yet, for all the satisfaction that the first day delivered.
So it was on the second day that our group sought out the smew, seen by chance the day before by two of our number on an inlet near Airport Hotel. The smew was on most of the group’s wish list, a bird seen in the western Aleutians in N America, otherwise only in Europe. There are some strikingly beautiful ducks in this world – even your local ho-hum mallard is quite a looker – but I’m talking here about ducks even you’d admit outclassed Mr. Mallard when it comes to colors and patterns, such as the wood duck or harlequin or hooded merganser or the mandarin, and the smew is in the same class. A spirited debate or symposium could no doubt he held on the subject “most beautiful duck” but is ill-advised as it just might end in a brawl, given the nasty disposition of so many birders (just kidding!?). As with all such things, de gustibus non disputandum set, different strokes for different folks, etc.
Sad to say we came up smewless this time, though there were a few other great birds there, shelducks and a tufted duck on a nest and more great crested grebes in their showy breeding duds. But the day ramped up quickly as within a few miles Matti pulled over by some conifers next to a field and announced “short-eared owl” and this was a chance encounter and not some planned stop at a nest box. We all got a good look at the bird sitting up in the conifer, but then it added a very special bonus by proceeding to launch and circle around the field, for did you know that the short-eared is one of the few owls that regularly hunts by day? Their flight is sometimes described as “moth-like” as in they kind of float around with sudden turns of direction, nearly hovering at times, not quite like the flight of any other bird. I have seen them hunting twice in the past twenty years and I can still remember where and at what time of day and what the temperature and the light were like (both happened in late winter near the ocean). Seeing one can have that effect. You ever seen an owl in flight, punk? If not, I hope you get lucky some day, you’ll never forget it.
Some of us could have watched that bird until it disappeared entirely but this might’ve been awhile and every birding trip has an agenda that beckons, no matter how good things get. We proceeded on past fields large and small and the ever-present timber stands, stopped to look at more curlews and godwits and geese and swans here and there and quietly awaited smaller birds skulking in the trees that our guides worked hard to bring into view – I am a terrible birder when it comes to keeping track of the various flycatchers and finches and warblers and other such small woodland birds that add up to a great life list, but I have great patience as everybody tries to “get the bird” and sometimes get a good look as it flashes into view then just as quickly flashes out, but to be honest my skills are not the greatest and did I mention I don’t keep a life list?
We stopped at a Finnature headquarters, which is Matti’s home organization, and monitored a feeder in the backyard that brought in various birds from the woods, though again some came and went very quickly. We got the best woodpecker views of the trip, the great spotted – though there is more to say about that in a minute – and now might be a good time to mention that Gerard is a legit authority on woodpeckers, has published a number of books well known in the field and maybe the best intro book for the layperson around, “Woodpecker” from Reaktion Books, that puts the species in a cultural and historical context as much as it gives the biology. Gerard shared some of his fascination and enthusiasm for woodpeckers with me at one point in the trip, and it was memorable.
So call it a culture clash, or at least a cultural curiosity and a sign that even in the great and wonderful and harmonious birding community of this great One World there is disagreement when it comes to names. There was one more stop at an owl nest box on Matti’s to-do list for the day, namely the Tengmalm’s, after the great Swedish naturalist Peter Gustaf. At least such is the case if you’re a European, or maybe just a Swede with national pride. Where I come from they call it the boreal owl, no disrespect for the Swedes, but in N America anybody calling it a Tengmalm’s will get quizzical looks from fellow birders and suspicions that one might be trying to show off in some way. On our species list it was called boreal, except when the guides called it a Tengmalm’s, which in Europe might be required by the ornithologists union or something. This name game also goes on with categories, as in some of what we call hawks they call buzzards and a bird we’d call a cormorant they call a shag and so on and so forth and scoobie-oobie-do etc. Gerard made a short eloquent speech about the needless confusion of all this (that probably only I remember) and of the value of the scientific name (while also clarifying that this is not the “Latin” name and did you know they were not the same?) There is a strong case to be made for calling the Tengmalm’s and/or boreal owl aegolius funereus or the willow ptarmigan and/or grouse lagopus lagopus and so forth, as then there is no confusion, just a lot more syllables to pronounce. And with botany this whole topic gets a whole lot crazier as the “common” names for plants can get very confusing indeed, a good reason to focus on birds.
At any rate a walk through another primeval forest to another box on a tree yielded the owl in question and another memory as regards the mystery and sheer strangeness of owls. Our only other sighting of this species previously had been the winter of 1996-97, when one could be seen in a bush outside 380 Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay section of downtown Boston, one of the half-dozen sightings of this species in Massachusetts in all of history and particularly easy to locate. The rat-hunting down there is well known as excellent, but that still has not tempted other boreal owls through the years, evidently. Maybe it’s the dirty water.
A final point I would like to make about these remarkable first days is that the highlight was the nesting boxes, and how the nest-theme was a predominant one for the whole trip. June is not only a great time for light and warmth in the north, but every birder knows that any number of avian species have made it a millennia-long habit to travel there to breed. For one thing there is food there, bugs and small rodents in abundance, but one could make a case for the dearth of human habitation also being a key factor. There are not a lot of people in northern Finland or Norway, and this gets more acute as one goes polar, and this probably draws breeding birds as much as anything as this world gets ever more crowded with humans. The upshot is that there were nesting birds everywhere, with the grand and cacophonous finale coming at Hornøya Island, as we shall see.
Of course timing is everything, and late spring and summer is breeding time for birds all over. From May through June in Boston this is undeniable, from all the baby birds un-nested and lost on the sidewalks, to the house sparrows that make a mess of our front porch and the robins I hear even now chirping at their new offspring, trying to negotiate the fences and yards behind our house. Then there was the one that nested right above our heads on the back porch a few years back, that didn’t seem to mind getting endlessly photographed, though it probably did.
So there was a sort of coda to the day, an after-dinner jaunt out to a black grouse lek that Matti’s informants had reported. What’s a lek? Besides being a unit of Albanian currency, “lek” also denotes kind of a sexual field-of-battle for certain species of grouse around the world, where the guys try to impress the ladies watching, not all that different from a typical singles bar in any major city. The difference is that the boys’ behavior at a grouse lek can get quite a bit less civil than you might find at a human watering hole, or so it is with some birds. On the other hand you might’ve been to a few bars in your day that weren’t especially civil, either; that is what bouncers are for, though it is not clear that in nature there are any grouse who play this role.
As with all after-dinner excursions on these trips, this one was optional but most of us piled into the vans to venture down more ungodly bumpy roads through the woods in the twilight (twilight is as dark as it gets at this latitude in summer, remember) while Matti scoped out the edges of various fields. The evening ended grouseless but the law-of-unexpected-consequences prevailed and we were treated to the grand spectacle of a black woodpecker passing back and forth in what one could call fly-by behavior of the best kind, even though it never landed anywhere close. The black is the size of a crow or the N American pileated, which means it’s BIG compared to most woodpeckers. Gerard the woodpecker-guy was ecstatic, as were we, and few felt bad about missing those grouse after getting the best possible of surprises.
