Fieldfare (juvenile)

Last full day in Stockholm; as we were returning to our hotel in a residential, somewhat leafy area we again saw a number of Fieldfares (Turdus pilaris), in the thrush family. They were behaving like American Robins, digging successfully for worms and feeding young. I returned with my big lens and got quite a number of good images, of which this is my favorite. My guess is that this bird left the nest considerably earlier this spring--I saw two or three that were clearly younger.

Much the more significant event of the day was a reunion with our friend Hanna. She is Swedish, but spent several years in Paris, overlapping with our winter sojourns there, through 2011. We had not seen her since then (around the blip I just linked to), and it was just wonderful to catch up. (I had hoped to put up a blip with her, but pretty though she still is, I actually did better with the fieldfares :) She is now studying Russian at the University of Uppsala, and it turns out she is from the town of Leksand to the north of here, which we will be passing near to on our birding trip to southern Lapland which begins. (I hope this begins a series of bird images.)