#finnoo

The mute swan territory fight. The Finnoo bird basin in Espoo was for many years the summer home for the same mute swan pair. In the spring 2015 the pair was already nesting, when one of them died, most likely because of the territory fight. The other one left the nest, but stayed in the basin over the summer. In the next spring a new pair took over the basin and everything was calm. However, a year ago there was a dramatic territory fights, which lasted several week and surprisingly also a whooper swan pair was involved. Four swans were killed in the fight. This spring has started also aggressively. There have been several fights and also a whooper swan pair has occasionally been involved. The pictures are from Sunday, May 6, when three mute swan pairs, i.e. six swans were taking part in the fight, which lasted several hours. It calmed down in the afternoon and the coming days will show the final result.

Suomenoajan Luonto has organised again the winter seeding place for birds – like in many earlier years. Great Tits and Blue Tits have been very active at the feeding place.

Great Tit, Blue Tit, Coal Tit have been the most dominant birds at the Suomenoja (Finnoo) winter feeding place. In some days there have been  more than 50 blue tits and great tits.

Suomenoja mornings. So far there have been few sunny January mornings in Espoo.Thus few examples of those. 

As written earlier Finnoo is a new major development target and area in Espoo. It is driven by Metro. Construction and creating a new and large city district has raised a lot of conflicting views and objections. One reason has been the nature values and close by Internationally Important Bird and Biodiversity Area. Now the Supreme administrative Court (KHO) has rejected objections to the proposed master city plan and it means that the plan is valid and legal. It also means that the construction will start. In the phase streets and infrastructure will be constructed. Among the first are Finnoonsilta (the 5 first pictures) and Djupsundsbäcken area (the 4 last pictures).

All things must pass. The removal of the Suomenoja (Finnoo) “landfill-hill” started in November. The final stage was started, when the work began in the the hill area around the elevator shaft construction for Länsimetro (the Western Metro). Now the hill is stored in many piles. In the existence of nearly 50 years, it became a place of butterflies, dragonflies, nesting birds and numerous, even rare flowers. All that is now gone. A lot of waste, which is nowadays classified as hazardous waste came out.

Icicle time, the artworks made by frost

All this means that some rare plants, meadows for butterflies and dragonflies as well as nesting places for birds will disappear.