Skating in springtime

Skating on the lake ice on the sunny day in springtime is magical hobby - until the ice breaks under your feet.

And on the sunny day in springtime it really may break very easily.

Even the ice of 50 centimeter may break under a man whose weight is 80 kilos.

Starlings in the sky of Rome

It was a bright November evening in Rome  in 2015. Me and my wife were sitting with couple of friends on a restaurant terrace in Trastevere. We all were a little bit tired 'cause we had gone sightseeing  all day long. That's why we decided to stay on a restaurant terrace to have pizza and a bottle of beer.

And what happened then?

Suddenly we heard sound like the rain shower from the roof of the terrace.

But there weren't the clouds in the sky and it wasn't the rain shower.

There was an enormous flock of starlings.

And the rain-like sound from the roof was caused by starlings' droppings.

Because of the droppings the starlings are considered as adverse animals in Mediterranean countries.

Great gray owl

My old friend Pete, organic farmer in southern Finland, called me one evening last February. He told me he saw an enormous big bird while he was loading logs on a trailer in a forest clearing. "It may be a tawny owl", he supposed.

It took me about a half an hour until I got there. For a moment I observed the landscape in front of me.

And there it was sitting on top of dead pine tree.

When I saw the bird I hardly believed my eyes.

It wasn't a tawny owl. It was great gray owl, one of the biggest owls  in Finland.

I have never before seen this big owl for this big creature mainly lives in northern Finland.

Seeing it in southern Finland is extremely rare.

When the cat's away...

When cat's away the mice will play.

Or in this case:  when hosts are away rabbits and brown hares will play in summer cottage's garden.

Redpoll

Redpoll

I searched Google for common redpoll.

Guess what the answer Google gave to me was?

It was a large number of photos of small sympathetic birds that especially during wintertime visit the feeding place of my summer cottage garden.

Then I wrote words arctic redpoll in the Google search box.

Now, too, the answer was a large number of a small sympathetic birds.

I'm not quite sure if among the common redpolls visiting the feeding place of my cottage are some arctic redpolls, too. That's because the common redpoll and the arctic redpoll look pretty much alike. That is why it's very difficult to see the difference between the two. As a matter of fact these two birds can crossbreed with each other. That's why I sometimes I wonder why we are talking of two different species. Why aren't we simply talking of redpoll.