11 - talitiainen
The talitiainen , parus major , is the great tit in English. The picture's a bit blurry, taken through glass and greatly cropped, of course. But I'm pleased with it, given that I was only using my little Canon compact camera. It's quite well disguised, against those autumn colours, don't you think? This isn't in Finland, but I gather the colours of the British subspecies is close to that of what is found in Finland; it seems to have a slightly wider black chest stripe than the Finnish variety. The species is widespread across North West Eurasia; my old (1996) Finnish bird guide/lintuopas tells me there were - a very broad estimate! - between 600,000 and a million breeding pairs in Finland. Current Wikipedia says 2 million. More in winter. Taking those numbers with a pinch of salt, you'd still have to think it's a successful species and is flourishing. As we keep having to acknowledge, winters in Finland, certainly in the South are gradually becoming less s...