June 5^th – Arrival to Helsinki International Airport, transfer to a nice hotel near the airport. 

June 6^th – Morning bird photography session at a local park.  This time of year, the Barnacle Geese should have their young.  Other species we should encounter here include Fieldfare Thrush, White Wagtail and Wood Pigeon.  Then we will take a mid-day flight to Oulu in Northern Finland.  We will check into our hotel.  Then in the evening we go to a blind which is visited daily by Eurasian Eagle Owl.  There is so much light this time of year that we can get good shots even at midnight.  Other species which visit the feeders this time of year include Eurasian Jays, Crested Tit, Yellowhammers, Great Spotted Woodpecker and others. 

June 7^th – We will leave the blind in the morning and return to our hotel for a sleep and lunch.  In the evening, we will go out again to look for Great Grey Owl, Ural Owl, Hawk Owl, Short-eared Owl, Long-eared Owl, Boreal Owl and Pygmy Owl.  It’s very unlikely we will get all of these but certainly we will get some.  Then in the late evening we will return to the hotel for the night. 

June 8^th – We will have an early morning start to look for Black Woodpecker, Three-toed Woodpecker, Lesser-spotted Woodpecker, Grey headed Woodpecker, Wryneck and Ortolan Bunting.  We will also spend some time photographing Red-throated and Arctic Loons and other waterbirds such as Horned Grebe.  They are all in nice breeding plumage this time of year.  Then we will return to our hotel, have lunch and check out.  We then have a transfer to eastern Finland where we will do our mammal photography.  We have our first mammal blind visit this afternoon.  Our main targets are Eurasian Brown Bear and Eurasian Wolf.  Both animals are reliably photographed at several blinds in the area.  You have the option of staying the night in the blind or returning to the lodge for the night.  It will have been a busy first couple of days, so we are thinking most of the group will want to return to the lodge this first night. 

June 9^th-14^th – We will have 6 full days of mostly mammal photography visiting different hides with different settings.  Some of the blinds are set on lakes where you can create beautiful reflection shots of bears and wolves.  Most evenings you will have the option of spending the night in the blind or returning to the lodge and then going back to the blind in the morning.  We will enter the blinds in the late afternoon each day.  These are the best blinds in the world for photographing Wolverine and it’s more likely to come in the evenings, remember you are very far North so there is daylight more than 20 hours per day.  If owls are nesting in the area, we may have some opportunities to photograph them and there is a feeding station for small bids such as woodpeckers, jays and tits. 

June 15^th – After another morning of photography, we will check out and return to Oulu, then take an evening flight back to Helsinki and transfer to a nice hotel near the airport.