Hyvää Juhannusta!

Here in Finland the festival of Juhannus is underway. This is midsummer, also called St. John's Day and it does not necessarily coincide exactly with the solstice. More likely it is the weekend after the solstice to allow the humans to recover from alcohol intoxication. We shall be relaxing on the Catio - hopefully in the sunshine which seems to have gone south to central Europe right now. Yesterday Äiti was wearing gloves when she went out to watch - you guessed it - stinky birds.

She was delighted to see this one - who was not so happy to see her. It's an oystercatcher but it must have been really hungry as there aren't many oysters round here.

As you can see, it had a little chick which made a break for it, striding boldly across the sands of the Baltic shore.

Meantime its parent tried to find some food and finally faced the camera.

Äiti used to see these birds a lot in Britain and they are coming a bit further north as the climate changes. Now we were not so happy that Äiti went out birdwatching but she has promised us a better deal over this weekend.