It was necessary to visit the crane webcam again the day before yesterday – if the cows had ”eaten” the video image on Friday  the fine creatures were not guilty of the absence of image on Sunday – probably a momentary cut in the mobile transmission stopped the connection for the whole day.

On Sunday night there was a truly massive migration that started at 18.00 and lasted to around 19.45. As an estimate about 3000 - 4000 cranes passed during that period in the Saaremaa direction. There were also many barnacle geese and greater white-fronted geese and a few bean geese and greylag geese  in the migration. The video cut is evidence of what could be seen in the sky during only two minutes, beginning at 18.43.

All migrating flocks yesterday night flew across the peninsula without stopping to Saaremaa to spend the night there: maybe this is a particular trend in the behaviour of the cranes this autumn. Only a few crane flocks consisting of some ten birds stayed on the open shore meadow.

The large flocks passed across at the back of the camera lens so that only a few solitary birds came into camera view in the evening, but the sounds of thousands of birds could be heard by all watchers.

This is how yesterday worked out, let us see about today …

The Sassi peninsula is one of the nodes of the migration, where the Finnish and Estonian cranes head for Saaremaa, stopping for about a week and then going across the western coast of Latvia towards south. This part of the cranes head for Spain for the winter.

The second large node for cranes is in the Lahemaa National Park where up to ten thousand cranes from Estonia, Finland and north-western Russia, Carelia gather. The cranes there head straight for the south for winter, going to Hungary and North Africa. The cranes from east and south-east Estonia go across Turhey to Ethiopia.

The map sent by goose and crane expert Aivar Leito shows the three major migration flyways of cranes.