Welcome to Landsort Bird Observatory!

The observatory is situated on the south part of the long and narrow island Öja. This island is both a Land's end for land birds coming from the north, a refuge for land birds which has crossed the Baltic during the preceding night, and also, because it protrudes out in the sea, an obstacle for seabirds on their way from the Gulf of Finland towards the south-west; the sea-birds therefore have to fly round the island's south tip, and can easily be counted.

Siberian rarities are mostly recorded in October. The autumn of 1999 produced two yellow-browed and one dusky warbler.

The island itself is a little more than 4 kilometres long and some hundred meters wide. The southern part is mostly bare bedrock, sparsely vegetated with bushes and gardens, but the middle and northern parts are wooded (which for some reasons is a pity because the rare birds often disappear into these woods not to be seen again; for other reasons a plus, because it provides excellent habitats for the migrating birds to store fat).

Many summer visitors also like the woodland, and among breeders are thrush nightingale, icterine warbler, red-backed shrike and wryneck. Red-breasted flycatcher is seen every spring and autumn and greenish warbler almost annually in late May - early June. The woods have grown up during the last 50 years, a disadvantage to the barred warblers, of which now only a few pairs breed annually.

There are also some bays with wet grassland, bushes and stands of reed, which attract e.g. reed buntings (rustic bunting is annual, sometimes in good numbers), warblers and bearded tits. The island's first dusky warbler was caught in the autumn of 1999 in the reed stand close to the observatory.

The shore-line is rocky and rugged, not especially attractive for birds, but in the winter purple sandpiper and dipper are regularly seen, and in summer the typical Swedish east coast avifauna is represented: arctic tern (a few colonies), oystercatcher, turnstone, redshank, rock pipit and common gull.

Waders pause on the island only in small numbers, because the wetland habitats are too limited. Instead, large numbers of arctic waders pass by in the summer and autumn if weather conditions are right, that is southwest-wind and cloudy, humid weather. Last summer the wader migration was spectacular some days.

In Sweden, Landsort's fame derives from the fact that many vagrants have been observed during the ten years since the observatory was founded. Yellow-browed and pallas´s warblers are annual; radde´s warbler, black-headed bunting, olive-backed pipit, sooty shearwater and nightingale have been observed twice; among the many other rarities observed are: siberian accentor, isabelline shrike, daurian swallow, short-toed treecreeper, bimaculated lark, black-throated thrush, purple heron, pallid harrier and surf scooter.

Most unexpected was, except for the siberian tit in -94, the plain leaf-warbler, Phylloscopus neglectus, on 10:th october -91. The staff didn't even know the existence of this species, and the bird was identified only after thorough study of literature. On the videotape, which was taken, it frequently calls "chip". A glimpse on the weather maps for Asia and Europe during the preceding weeks shows that the winds were favourable all the way from Iran.

The landfall of migrating passerines and other land birds in humid, misty conditions in September - October is high in rank among the Landsort birders; there is the thrill of rarities which might be found, but also the sheer beauty of the early mornings with the lighthouse's beams and the calls from thrushes, robins and others up in the misty autumn sky.

Text by Mattias Pettersson 1999