Spring has Arrived

Seemingly overnight Spring arrived here in Kuopio. I started out the day checking on the progress made by a pair of great crested grebes on their nest. I doubt I’ll see the little ones (dabchicks) while I am here. The grebes were joined by several mallards, goosanders, teals, and a pair of wigeons.

I noticed Arctic terns fishing the shallow waters where the other waterfowl were congregating. It’s the first time this season that I have noticed them in any numbers. It gives me something new to try and photograph so hopefully I’ll have better photos soon.

I wandered off to the island and nearly all of the snow is gone. From there I went to Kuopio city center where I seemingly was joined by the entire city population of 120,000. Trees are finally leafing out and there are a few flowers in the city parks.

One destination today was the Museum of Kuopio which recently (May 13, 2022) opened its renewed collection. The museum consists of two main parts: natural history and cultural history. A highlight of the museum is a life sized mammoth replica. Surprisingly, the number of documented mammoth finds in Finland are limited to a handful of teeth. Unlike Russia to the East where well preserved specimens have been unearthed from permafrost. A current traveling exhibit, “Microsculpture”, contains macroscopic insect photographs by Levon Biss. The photos were made in conjunction with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Each photograph represents a composite image of approximately 8000 individual photographs. The prints are then enlarged until they are about 10 feet tall. The amount of detail in these images is incredible. I’d suggest you visit the artist’s website and learn more about this project (http://microsculpture.net/) – it’s well worth your time. The image below is taken from the artist’s website.

I visited the outdoor and indoor markets and grabbed a snack from the Hanna Partanen bakery which has a small booth in the town square. Far right is a rice pie (Iso riisipiirakka), middle – meat pie (Lihapiirakka), and left is an apple and raspberry pastry (Munkki – omena/vadelma).

A topic of conversation all week has related to the Finnish government’s decision to join NATO. Many Finns consider this to be one of the most important decisions ever made by this nation. That’s it for now – I head off to Helsinki tomorrow.