Lapland Day Out

A day trip to Lapland in search of Father Christmas gave only one hour of daylight and only one bird seen. It was however my favourite bird, a Waxwing, feeding just before it went dark on rowan berries. There were masses of rowan berries in the township of Rovaniemi and this was the obvious reason why no Waxwings have come to Britain this Winter.Plus the strange fact that it was two degrees colder in Manchester when we left than it was in Lapland when we arrived three hours later! My blog photo of this week was taken in Manchester during the big Waxwing invasion of two years ago.

Five years ago, with the temperature 30° below freezing, I spent eight hours in a wooden hide in the Finnish forests filming Golden Eagles and thus suffering with frostbite afterwards! I have included some of those photos in this week’s gallery. Two very different and unforgettable days in the Northern Arctic but both very magical. Click here

On Hopwood this week there was a flock of thirty five Redpolls feeding in the tops of a group of birches. A flock of eleven Cormorants flying past was a weird sight to record in the middle of a golf course.