Overflight

Mums are pretty cool. Mine came to pick me up me for a bird watching expedition this Wednesday night. We drove to Viikki, a nature area in Helsinki, just a bit east from Kumpula, and walked to a birdwatching tower on the waterside.

There were already two guys there, you know the kind: brown greenish jackets with 25 pockets, rough beards and alert friendly eyes, huge cameras standing on tall tripods, relaxed poses looking silently out to the bay. We were silent too. My mum was happy with her binoculars, I was happy with my camera.

The wait was worth it. After an hour or more of standing there, seeing and breathing and watching the sky get darker and darker there was a sound. Cackling from north-east, from the direction of the fields. There were maybe 20 of them. Barnacle geese. They flew just over us and towards west and landed on the bay.


A few seconds and then there was a louder sound, more cackling, from a wider area now, then building up, getting closer, thundering towards us, turning into a machine or a train or an airplane, all around us, and then 3000 geese are flying right above us, over us, everywhere around us. We can see them quite clearly. Their shapes, their wings, their formations, their strength, they are everywhere, they fly fast and in a minute it is over. The last are descending on the bay nearby. The cackling continues more distant on the calm of the bay and when we walk back to the car after some tea from the thermos it is already dark.

Here's some audio:



And pictures, as usual, here.