Birds of Finland.

This summer so far has been unbelievable. The weather I mean. More than 2 months straight with between 25-31 degrees in the shadow, no rain and no wind to speak of. They say it has been over 40 years since we last had such a summer. Normally we have between 16-24 degrees here in the north. And I who had been looking forward to escaping the heat from Shanghai to a cooler Finnish summer... Well, at least it is not that humid here, so it still feels a little bit cooler!

The whole of last week we were up in Kuopio, in the middle of Finland. We stayed at a friends house, who lived just by one of the thousands and thousands of lakes up there. It was really beautiful, but oh my the mosquitos after sunset...

This week and the next we are staying at our summer cottage with my step mom. There are always things that need to get done every summer here, and this summer it was time to paint the pier. So that is one of the tasks that are keeping us busy. Then there is cleaning the roofs, weeding, the woodwork on our boat needs a layer of oil and so on. I have not had time to paint but once, so I will post those after I have had time to paint some more. Hopefully in the coming few days when the pier is all done.

Today I have a few photos of birds that I have been lucky enough to get. I'm always trying to get new reference material when I am home. And I think that some of these might end up as paintings!

This swan momma only had one chick this year. And much too small for this late in the summer. I'm afraid this chick will not be ready to fly in time for their migration south for the winter.

This is the father, and he was very protective of his little family. There was one other lonely swan that wanted to have the same area to feed in, and they often displayed their irritation at each other.

In my last post, I showed you the White-tailed sea eagle that has been nesting close to us, this time I was able to see one of the chicks as well. I think this is one of the last year's chicks that has returned.

Canada geese.

While we were in Kuopio I was lucky enough to get to see one of my favourite birds, the Black-throated loon. They kept quite far away from where we were sitting, but I did get a few far away shots.

Now it is time to go and do some physical work again. I think my hubby wants to move some stones to strengthen a sand wall that we have here. In this heat, we have to do all the task according to where we can work in the shadow, so the last painting of the pier has to wait to later in the afternoon when the sun has moved behind the trees.