A Twites short trip to Trutnoff Festival....

I had been toying with the idea of going back to the Czech Republic for some time, but had no idea I'd go this year for just 2 days. 'Trutnoff' is a music festival that runs for 4 days in mid August which has been held since the mid 80's. I was last at the festival in 1996 and was last at the site with Grant in 2001. The sight itself being held at an old amphitheatre on the historic sight of the 1866 'Battle of Trutnov' during the Austro-Prussian war in the foothills of the Krkonoše Mountains. A ticket for the whole event works out at around £32 or less. One of the festivals 'patrons' is no other than 'Chief' Václav Havel.

Iva Bittova with Dunaj in 1996 from the Trutnov
Festival website http://www.festivaltrutnov.cz/

So I set of on Saturday morning at 3am, caught 2 night buses through Drunk London to Heathrow only to find the flight had been delayed for an hour, however in spite of this all Swiss air flights had been grounded so I didn't miss my connection to Prague from Zurich. I had a nice chat with a women going over to see her mother somewhere near Ostrava all the way to the Airport Express coach. Caught a train from Prague for a 3 hour journey to Trutnov. The trip was really pleasant all the way. The most interesting bird of note was a flyby Nutcracker that dived into a small gap in a some conifers somewhere near Trutnov itself. Certainly some beautiful scenery up near the Polish border and I'm always amazed how wild it is, as in how much of the borders and field edges are left weedy with lots of wildflowers and consequently more birds.
My original intention, as before, was to camp at the festival, but I ended up booking hotel. When I arrived at Trutnov a kind women saw me struggling with my old map and walked with me virtually all the way there. She had walked about 4km through the town she said.
Unfortunately by the time I had sorted myself out it was really too late to go and see the headliner on Saturday, Patti Smith, I know that is a crime! The hotel restaurant was closed so I went and got some beers and some junk food from a garage, then went for a walk about in the failing light which was gorgeous. There was some intense flashing light from a distant thunder storm on one side, the laser show from the festival to the south and the sound of crickets everywhere plus in one part of a village boiling steam hissing through a hole in some vast pipe system running though the area added a surreal effect.

The next morning i awoke to a misty morning and walked for a few hours in the pine forests near a place called Webrovka, which appears to be a guest house in the middle of the forests. There were plenty of common species about, the most notable being Firecrest, Crested Tits and Common Crossbills. The bird life was far more interesting in the farmland near the villages with Red-backed Shrikes, 3 Whinchat, Spotted Flycatchers and several Black Redstarts that seemed keen on one bushy garden in particular.

Red-berried Elder (Sambucus pubens)

I went back to the hotel and once I'd asked where it was and located it, had some breakfast then I was off to the Festival for the afternoon. The weather brightening up as I walked through Trutnov.

Needless to say the festival had grown somewhat since I last remembered it, there was one stage and a dance tent in 1996, now there were about 5 separate stages, no dance tent (luckily) and the campsite area was much more extensive, but not on the scale of say, Glastonbury obviously. Beer was 32 koruna, which is about 90p a pint, so had some of them, and some more. Outside of the festival the local beer was 16 koruna, 46p, so had some of them too. There was all manner of good food available. The security guards were friendly and you could take in a camera or virtually anything, even a beer, they didn't spend much time searching, no need to really, the vibe is really good here. You can walk in and out via the camping area and out into the forest, just as I remember, giving the opportunity to take a few trips into the 'battlefield' area to go birding in the forest.

Punks definitely not dead

Not sure who this was but they were bloody good, ska-fusion

During one of my wanders a thrash metal band came on and it thundered through the forest, 'thunder in the hills'. I think it may have been Kreator but they had finished by the time I got back. The second walk I took I was pleased to see my 4th Black Woodpecker of the year, in the same area I had seen them 18 years ago during a thunder storm if I remember correctly.

Cabbage Thistle (Cirsium oleraceum)

Wood Ragwort (Senecio nemorensis)

Narrow-leaved Everlasting Pea (Lathyrus sylvestris), part of the name at
least sounding rather appropriate at the time (think Chumbawamba)

I headed back and watched group called N.O.H.A who were storming through a set mixing drum and bass with world music and other genres. Then it was the group Tinariwen, nomadic tribal blues-men from Mali. However, as it was Sunday night the opening of their set seemed rather subdued, at least as far as the audience were concerned, however about half way through the auditorium was full again. They are so laid-back that the music just builds and builds with seemingly little effort on their part. They kept asking the audience 'Is okay?' to which there were growing cheers.

N.O.H.A

N.O.H.A stage dive

Tinariwen

Tinariwen stage dive

I think it was about this time I discovered a stall selling absinthe, I had some it was horrible, so I tried absinthe and lemonade, tasted great, felt okay, can't see the problem. But as you can see from these photos below I may have been worse off than I thought.

The last three pictures are of SKA-P from Spain, a very lively ska band and very clever at that. I was talking to a girl who was a huge fan and she offered to hold my stuff while I took the pictures and even then I couldn't manage it. I then remember watching a Czech metal band for a while on the other main stage, then think I left but after giving my beer to a couple who asked for it on the way home I must have absinthe-scooted my way back to the hotel as suddenly it was morning and I had to leave.

I was hoping to spend a bit of time in Prague on the way back but there just wasn't enough time. The flight on the way back meant a 3 hour stopover in Basel, which meant I could do a bit of birding on the Swiss side of the border, this turned out to be impossible as I could not find anywhere to go, there was what looked like a lake but it was fenced off and a kind gentleman gave me a lift back to the airport. So I walked through the airport to the French side (the only way to cross the border at this point) and tried to find a nature reserve called the Petite Camargue, but ended up in a place called Saint-Louis instead and seeing as there wasn't enough time I made do with that, it was nice and French anyway. On the way back there were 2 Pied and 2 Spotted Flycatchers by the airport.

Meadow Clary (Salvia pratensis)

Brown Knapweed (Centaurea jacea)

Wild Marjoram (Oreganum vulgare)

Minsmere has waders shock!

It occurs to me that rarities are mostly found on a Sunday night, which is irksome.  In the last few weeks they've been found on a Sunday night and I've had work or family commitments that I couldn't get out of, which is ever so irksome.  So Great Knot, Ross's Gull, Stilt Sandpiper, Short-toed Lark and a couple of Pratincole have slipped by.  Yesterday I decided to be proactive and claw one of the more reliable Pratincoles back, next week Marco and I are hoofing it down to Devon using the "Marco method" (overnight bus) for the RG if it adds to its long sojourn on Bowling Green Marsh.

Early (cheapest train) to Saxmundham and to Leiston with the idea of a stroll along the beach to Minsmere then a wiggle around Dunwich Heath and Westleton to Darsham. Not a lot to look at on the sea, which was a myriad of tiny mirrors, bar the nesting Kits on the offshore structures and a couple of Little Gull feeding with terns around the outfall. Hundreds of butterfly though: Greyling, Meadow Brown, Common Blue, Gatekeepers etc. Hardly anything passerine like. My first wader a feeding Greenshank when I got to the levels.  Here I met a RSPB volunteer who said that the east hide was packed solid, so I found a suitable anti-tank block and set up, far too distant to scope the scrapes in the haze but an excuse for a rest. A family trio of birders passed and we chatted.  They were unhappy about the behaviour of the birders hogging the hide (apparently the RSPB had advised against using personal scopes as there would be volunteers on hand to show the star attraction through theirs - it wasn't working). The public hide they advised would be the best place to avoid the jam.  On the plus side they even picked out the bird, a brown blob, to give me its position. I packed up and moved to the public hide. The offshore breeze was making the heat bearable, what it was like in the closed hide with all those bodies in I can't imagine.

Just a few people on the public viewing platform, but no one was on the bird, they'd all seen it and were discussing other things.  Apparently I had missed a Spoonbill back aways because I'd been on the path rather than the dune ridge.  Bothered, not really. In fact nothing much got my fancy apart from a large group of Little Gull in front of the north hide, they could do with coming a tad closer! OK the Greenshank were smart, B-tailed Godwits the most active feeders, a good number of Spotted Redshank in various stages of moult, a smattering of smaller waders in the form of Dunlin, Sanderling, Green Sandpiper and a couple of Wood Sandpiper, of course there were Avocets, but the small gulls won it for me. Later small groups would float effortlessly over our position, giving stunning views - best I've ever....

 Found the Pratincole and lost my companions as they wandered off to do a circuit.  A group of sprightly old ladies arrived next and I showed them the CP and a few other choice things that they couldn't see with their bins.  They complained that no one in the other hides had given them the time of day let alone a view through the scope.  It was hard work getting them all to see the bird centred in the scope, but I have infinite patience and jokingly charged them £10 a look. They left happy and I was non the richer.  Helped quite a few others on to the bird too, and then it began to do a few circuits off to the south.  That's it for the day, said one wise sage as the bird promptly came back and did a few large circles overhead. In one of its larger orbits high to the north I picked up 3 snowy white Spoonbill, gleaming against the brilliant blue sky.

As the traffic past through I recognised one person I knew from Wanstead, John Weil. A non-driver he had walked from Darsham and got slightly lost, yeagh I know that feeling. We nattered about things Wanstead and twitching; apparently he had failed majestically (3 times) to get the ST Eagle, but told me of the time he slept on this very platform waiting for a Greater Yellowlegs to perform, know that feeling as well. We parted him to do a circuit and me to source a coffee at the centre. On the way had another quick look at the sea, vastly empty, bar a juv Med Gull, Whimbrel flying south and a couple of Sandwich Terns.  I did my sandwiches too.

Not a lot to be said for the rest of the day at Minsmere, I had a half-hearted half hour in one of the other hides - a Bittern being the only thing of note - and decided it was time to wend the hot and sticky way back towards a station.  A brief detour to Dunwich Heath got me this year's Dartford Warbler, Westelton was like an oven switched on with nothing cooking, though I got my first White Admiral as I, literally, hot footed it down the road.

By the time I got to Darsham I was completely shagged, the only problem being my advance ticket were not for another two hours, but knackerdness won and Greater Anglia trains are now pounds richer....

Finland again Part 3 - a very short trip to Oulu and back

The train journey was actually pretty good, okay, I did get the wrong seat again at first and turned the light switch off instead of opening the door on one occasion but other than that, it was fine. Seven hours seemed to go quite quickly, lots of music to listen to and lots of pine trees and farms to look at out of the window. Some places we passed on the train were the kind of places that I would of thought, yep, I'm getting off here, there was nothing but bogs, pines, clearings and amongst the bogs and pines I noticed a curious shrub called Labrador Tea growing everywhere. I arrived at Oulu about 1am, the train being half an hour early, can you imagine that happening in the UK, half an hour early? As I'd expected it was light, maybe a little dim, but light as far as I'm concerned. I had to take a photo of a map of the city in order to find my way round, I was really tired so I decided to head for a camp site to the north of Oulu. I was amazed how coming up this far north actually felt as though I'd gone further south, it was quite a busy, trendy place. Several people hung around outside a multitude of bars along the road I got lost on straight away. The only thing I knew about Oulu is what my friend Outi, who used to live here, had told me some years ago and here I was hoping to see owls when I hadn't even got a map! Anyway I found the campsite, must have got there at about 3am, a bank vole scuttled about and then a friendly security guard came out to help me, he took my passport in case I legged it in the morning without paying, fair enough. He said I was only the third English person at the campsite he'd seen this year! Yellowhammers were singing by the reception, more recording for Pavel was on the cards.

I put the tent up and crawled in exhausted. The dawn chorus was well under way, but I manged to sleep through that. In the morning I awoke kind of late and still felt exhausted. Still I took a walk to the beach and a strange promenade, another huge shower dumped its contents on me so I hid under the promenade roof.
The sea was strangely empty of birds, a couple of terns flew about and some Black-headed Gulls.

This is Oulu in the daytime, much darker than Oulu in the night-time!

My plan was to to to Liminka or Liminganlahti nature reserve - this never actually happened. I caught a bus to the airport (this was 13km from Oulu anyway!) and got talking to a man who I met at the bus stop who was some kind of entrepreneur dealing with wholesale. He said he was staying at a hotel at the airport whilst his son dropped of the keys to his car or something like that. Anyway we got talking about travel, music, films and various other things over a pint at the airport, this was a pretty good way to spend the morning. He said he was almost a millionaire. He gave me his details as he has cabins up in Lapland which he was urging me to go to. At about 1 we went our separate ways and I found some kind of map and tried to make my way to the ferry port a way to the west of Oulunsalo, but only made it to Oulunsalo as the weather turned again and I was soaked, the road was full of road works and it just wore me out. So I went back towards the airport and took a bus back having not seen much at all apart from some Goosanders and rather surprisingly two Grey Partridges. However I'm glad for our chance meeting. I also made a recording of a Yellowhammer on the way back

Oulunsalo

Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi)

I ate using my stove at the campsite then had a walk along the sea front, which seemed like a big lake-front, the water didn't smell salty at all, and there is very little tide along the Gulf of Bothnia. There were some very nice plants at the lake, I mean, seas edge, and a cool, fresh wind blew in from the west.

Tufted Loosestrife (Lysimachia thrysifolia)

Marsh Pea (Lathyrus palustris)

Again being exhausted I went to sleep early and rose not too early. There was a Blackcap singing on the camp site that had a strange song unlike any I've heard before, it had some mournful notes not unlike some notes in Hermit Thrush song and sometimes it would go in to some almost Common Nightingale type sub song, made me wonder where this birds wintering grounds were, certainly not here, that's for sure. I never did manage to get a recording of this, which I regret. I had a quick walk to the beach, there was an Arctic Tern being chased by a tiny skua, not much bigger than the tern, looked good for Long-tailed, looked like a juvenile too, maybe too early, first summer? I then decided to walk to a lake a few kilometres inland as I had to catch a train back at around 4:45, crazy really. It was a pleasant enough walk through suburban areas surrounded by pine forest, kind of reminded me a little of suburban Atlanta in the US, though that would be really hot at the same time of year. However the climate in Oulu is warm in the summer it seems, certainly humid enough, brings out the mozies. Again there were some nice Northern flora along the lake shores, nothing too exciting on the lake, however several Whooper Swans had broods there and I spend a bit of time recording a Reed Bunting of all things.

Cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus)

Dwarf Cornel (Cornus suecica) this smallest of the dogwoods

Wigeon

Red Squirrel

By the time I got back there really wasn't much time to do a lot except feed some bread to the very tame Wigeon on the camp site (who also had 3 chicks nearby) so I decided to pack up the tent and walk to the beach on the way back, to my surprise a stage had been erected there, and it turns out I was going to miss their summer party with an appearance by no other than Samantha Fox

I walked back along a track through some mainly secondary woodland with some older trees dotted about, full of mosquitoes, maybe the worst place I've come across them, I found out this as on my way back I heard what I thought was a Great Grey Owl, actually it was a Ural Owl call but I thought they were sound-checking the PA at the beach and was convinced they used an owl sound because, well it makes sense, they would use an Owl sound, a Ural Owl sound wouldn't they? Anyway it sounded too loud to be a real owl. I walked on, then heard it again further away from where I had just been standing, oh, I thought. I walked back, nothing, so whether it could have been a real Ural Owl I don't know, seems strange to me. I needed to get out of there because my head was itching like mad and burning too! I had one final unexpected stress out when I ended up walking the wrong way, away from the station, I had to run back with my back pack which was not fun, but made the train, if I had carried on I would have missed it.

Bye bye from Oulu, next time go get a map, stay
longer and find out where to go for the Owls.

The journey back was okay once I'd settled down. I got off the train at around midnight at Tikkurila, it had clearly been a hot day here, quite a few people staggered home from bars, including one man who went up to a young woman and just stared at her for a few seconds, then walked a few steps and fell into a telephone booth, got up and walked on without changing the expression on his face, I noticed one or two people keeping a wary eye on him. The bus came and it took me to the airport again, a week after I had arrived there, seemed strange, like it was only a couple of days ago. There were some drunk people somewhere on the other side of the woods that alarmed me a bit, but soon I had the tent up, crawled in and fell asleep. The next morning I packed the stuff away and left my tent, sleeping bag and some clothes in the woods and went for a long walk to a nearby forest, the same one I had visited in the spring on my stop-over to South Korea

View from the camp spot at Vantaa, looks like it could be miles from
anywhere, when in fact there is a business centre a few hundred
metres from here.

Well today it was really hot, I walked a different route through the forest, another birder came past me, nearly made me jump, whilst I was erecting the umbrella, I didn't see him again, maybe he got lost, ha. A few hours later, actually it was me who got lost, I always get more lost the closer I am to civilisation, actually that's a good thing. though there is no way to judge that, if I get lost in Scotland say, how do I gauge how far I am from civilisation. Here in Southern Finland its a different matter. I suddenly appeared at some type of quarry, it looked like a dry river bed, there was a huge hill, I climbed up, none of this was familiar from my last visit or was it? I went down to a few houses, there was a family staring at some ruined building or something and a beautiful looking blond girl doing exercises along a small track with headphones on. I thought about who to ask, didn't take long to decide, I went up to her and asked her if she knew where the river was. She gave me a raised eyebrow-ed expression which made me laugh, as that said it all, she laughed back, she'd never heard of a river, she also told me the villages name, I'd never heard of it. So I went back the way I'd come and got a view, the airport was over there miles away, right I reckon the river is on this side, I asked another woman along the way, I was right, 'Keep going for a kilometre, past an exercise area, then a little way down from there' Found it. As soon as I got there and was putting together the Primus for a good cup of Coffee, I heard what sounded like a Greenish Warbler singing in the pines, it was one and I recorded that. Then had a beer

Wooly Burdock (Arctium tomentosum)

On the way back I recorded some more Yellowhammers, whilst doing that a Hawfinch flew across one of the fields. The farmland, field area just past the forest reminded me of Trutnov in Northern Bohemia or maybe Moravsky Kras in South Moravia, very beautiful. Actually, that may not show so well in the photo, you had to be there.

Back at the 'camp spot' I settled for my last night. A Black Woodpecker called then flew past in the evening. In the morning I got up early and made my way to the airport, I hadn't been alone, there was a person under a blanket on a mattress about 100 metres away from where I had been. A popular spot for a stopover.