20.06.2024 - Indoor Meeting : Hot and Cold European Breaks

Speaker: Drew Lyness
Reporter: Sue Gale

Drew Lyness is an old friend of the club, and for our June meeting he gave us an entertaining account of two recent birding holidays in Europe. For the first holiday, the cold one, Drew gave us a cautionary tale about a few days in Estonia in mid-March. It started well. Landing in Tallin they could see that much of the winter’s snow had melted, and they made straight for the iconic island of Saaremaa. They met with 1000s of European White-fronted Geese (we see them here in small numbers), plus the occasional Tundra Bean Goose and pairs of Cranes everywhere. Getting there on a ferry with prodigious amounts of food available (!) they could see ice still on the estuaries, plenty of Smew and Goosander, White-tailed Eagles from the deck and a single Rough-legged Buzzard. Once they landed Drew’s friend Jake soon located a raft of Steller’s Eider Ducks. This is the most accessible place to see these special ducks. Inland they searched for Pygmy Owls in the dark before sleeping, only to wake up to the worst storm recorded at that time of year. Half of the island was without electricity and the other half had no water, but the ferry was still running. They made a bolt for it.

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