5 days at my cabin – day 4

I spent the morning gathering wood and splitting logs.  Late morning I heard a vehicle and eventually my friend and neighbour Erik appeared.  He had been ploughing the road to our cabins with his military valp and it was nice to see that I would have some company.

He drove up to his cabin and made fire to get the cabin warm and then came to join me for coffee at my cabin.  Later in the afternoon we decided to try and walk across the marshes to another large lake.

There was still a layer of ice under the water so I wasn’t too difficult to get across to the lake.

As we walked back across the marsh there were quite a few Wood Sandpipers, Spotted Redshanks and Greenshanks feeding there.  This Green shank sat up in a tree watching us.

We spent the evening fishing, but did not catch anything.

Later in the evening we drove around in the forest (the Valp will go just about anywhere!!) looking for birds, Moose or bear but we only saw a Capercaillie.

New bird species for the year were a pair of Smew on the cabin lake, a Dunnock and a Rustic Bunting singing at the cabin.

5 days at my cabin – day 3

I decided to start my day off with a good breakfast.  Curry and cheese bannock bread, with fried sausage!

Most of the day was taken up finishing off the new ceiling.

Over the fireplace, where rain water had leaked in before I bought the cabin a 2,4m long ceiling bearer was completely rotten.  I needed to replace it before the ceiling could be completed, but did not have anything long enough, so using my saw and axe

I made a housing joint to connect two shorter pieces together.

There were over 100 Bramblings feeding on seed I had put out and so a took a break mid-morning to take some photographs of them.

Because the walls and roof of the cabin (like most older properties here) is insulated with saw-dust, you get a continual fall of saw-dust when you are working.   To reduce the amount of saw-dust falling from the ceiling I have placed newspaper in all the gaps and open spaces.

Saw-dust falling all the time also meant that I got very dirty. So each evening after I had finished working,  I filled my solar shower with warm water and hung up out side the cabin so that I could shower and get clean.

The only new bird species today were a pair of Goosander.

5 days at my cabin – day 2

I awoke next morning and it was snowing heavily.   I estimated the time to be around 6am.

The main reason for my visit to the cabin was to remove the ceiling in the living room and replace it with a new one.

After making breakfast I started pulling down the ceiling.

I remembered that Teres had  little radio in the cabin, so I turned it on to listen and find out what the time was.  As I started fixing up the new ceiling panels the 8am news came on the radio.  This means that I had got up at about 4am!!!

It took most of the day to get half of the ceiling completed.  The 3.6m panels kept bending as I tried to put them up and this made it very difficult to connect the tongue and groove joints.

I made a great tasting meal with food items I had available and thought I would write up the receipt;

1 tin of Cambells Mushroom soup, 1 tin Baked Beans, Carrot, leak, onion, pepper, mushrooms, 1 stock cube, pepper & mixed herbs, tomato ketchup, powdered soup an sausage.

I fried the sausage and vegetables in a little oil.  Then I added a water and seasoning and cooked for 10 minutes.  Then I added the soup and tomato ketchup and cooked everything for another 15 minutes.  Finally I added the beans and powered soup (to thicken the mix) and coked for five more minutes.

The snow had stopped late afternoon and after that there were both Spotted Redshank and Greenshank present on the marsh.  There was also a Restart singing in the evening.

 

 

A cold weekend at the cabin

Spring is going to be late this year.  A cold north wind has been blowing for three weeks now and although the sun lifts day time temperatures just above freezing, at night temperatures can still go down as low as -30 degrees.

I arrived at the cabin Friday evening and made fire in both the kitchen stove and in the fireplace.  After a couple of hours the cabin was warm and with a night time temperature of -20 degrees I kept the fires going all night.

Early on Saturday morning I cooked breakfast; potatoes, sausage, eggs and onions.

I spent some time ice fishing, but it was very cold and I caught no fish, so I decided to do some photography.

There were several different birds coming to the bird feeder and I particularly wanted to photograph Siberian Tit and Siberian Jay.  Siberian Jay’s were not so difficult to photograph.  After standing for 15 minutes they came to feed.

To get VERY close to the Siberian Tit’s, I put a reindeer skin on the snow, and some food just in front of me and laid there and waited for them to come down.  It proved more difficult than expected to get photo’s of them because they kept flying down and sitting on my head!!  Eventually they came for the food.

On Sunday, while out in the forest with my snowmobile I came across some very strange tracks.

I called my friend and neighbour at the cabin Erik, and explained what I had found and he drove out immediately to take a look.  Eventually we deduced that the spore was that of a displaying male Capercaillie.

We followed the tracks on our snowmobiles and found this fine print where the bird had originally landed (from the right you see where the tail touched the snow, then where the body impacted and finally the imprints of the wings, then he walks away displaying).

This is what the display looks and sounds like.

Another weekend fishing

On Saturday I took the snowmobile to my cabin.  I dragged a pulka behind the snowmobile, which contained my rucksack.

Last year all the small rodents were killed during the winter and so since then we have seen no evidence of small rodents, so I was surprised to find hundreds of small rodent tracks around the cabin.  The tracks belonged to shrews (didn’t manage to get a photo of one of the shrews unfortunately).

The temperature had been -24 earlier in the morning, but laying out on the ice fishing it felt quit warm.

The sun is just coming up over the tree tops now

On Sunday I went fishing with my neighbour Folke.  I caught 1 Rainbow trout.

Folke made fire on the ice using an oven tray

placed on two pieces of wood were we cooked coffee.

The sun is re-appearing over the horizon

Up on the hill in Nattavaara we can now see the sun for about one hour around midday.

It will be at least another week before we see it at the bottom of the hill.

Yesterdays dinner guests

I was at work yesterday, but Teres was at home and took some pictures of some guests that arrived for dinner and spent most of the day at our house.

There was one almost completely white reindeer with them.  He had a bell around his neck which helps to locate the reindeer when they are in the forest.

This is a mother and calf that are digging in the snow to locate food

and this animal is fitted with a GPS collar as part of a project to study bear predation on reindeer.  When a bear comes within 100 metres of the reindeer, the collar activates and begins sending a signal to the researches.  They have found that 60% of reindeer calves are taken by bears!

Great Grey Shrike

I had a nice surprise just outside the window of our house at 16:00 this afternoon.  There was a Great Grey Shrike (Lanius excubitor),

which was on the ground having just caught a Great Tit on the bird feeder which Teres’ father has just made for us.

The shrike flew off carrying the Great Tit (Parus major), but hopefully it will still be here tomorrow.

Northern Light in September

Many people here believe that you can only see Northern Light during the winter months, bit we saw Northern Light on 25th August at around 23:00 and again on 3rd September at 21:30.  Here are a couple of pictures from 3rd September, taken from my house.

 

A relaxing weekend at the cabin

I have started working full-time now and am finding it much easier to get around and do things.  At the moment I am building a new website for Nattavaara Hembygdsförening and this have given me ideas for a new look to this site, which I will be developing.

Last weekend we were at our cabin.  Teres’ cousin and here family were staying in a camper-van there also.  Friday was my first day free of medication for three months and so I enjoyed a couple of beers.

During the night and early morning I heard strange noises in the chimney.  I thought at first it was a mouse, but then realised it was a bird flapping on the chimney damper.  I made a net to catch the bird with out of a net curtain and then opened the damper and two House Martins (Delichon urbicum) dropped out and flew around.

I caught them both and released them to join a large number of House Martin’s flying around over the cabin.

On Saturday evening myself and Teres drove to a large stream to do some fishing.  Even with mosquito repellent, the mosquitoes were horrendous!  It is the worst year for mosquitoes here for several years  and after only a few minutes, the effect of the repellent stops working and clouds of them descend upon you.

We fished at various locations along the stream for a couple of hours.  I caught a Pike and Teres caught a Grayling.  The Grayling we took back to the cabin, where I made an improvised smoker, with Juniper added for flavour

I made a fire inside the stove I made last year and placed the tin onto the stove.

We will be back to the cabin next weekend.