I didn’t have time for ringing today as I was getting the birders club ready for the Eagles Day slideshow. It was attended by a few locals as well as a few new faces, Jørgen Kabel for one. It went quite well, considering the aptitude of the attendees, but for me the most interesting part was after I’d finished the talk and Jørgen and I looked at the differences between greater and lesser spotted eagles.

It was a pretty low key day after this, a bike ride into town, followed by some computer work. The mist came down so birding was non existent. I did however photograph two roe deer in the fog on the way back from town, clearly very confident due to the lack of people. I made some social media posts, and Simon did the same from Oman, which added a different flavour. I made a nice chilli in the evening, which should see me through the next couple of days, and free me up to do other things. I have another presentation coming up at the end of the week which I need to start working on.

Me admitting to everyone I don’t know what an eagle is!

Ghostly roe deer . . 

The weather was good and the wind low, so I got up early and put some fieldfare tape out in the garden. Gave it an hour and after getting one bird, swapped it over to the redpoll tape. Which was much more successful, with 28 birds being caught after that, and there would have been more if the speaker hadn’t run out of battery. It was a busy but fun morning, with my first non redpoll bird ringed since I got back, which was a 2nd year male great tit. There was also some movement of birds, with a greylag goose flock over the Obs and a kestrel feeding in the garden. Jurgen Cable came over for a chat, first time I’d seen him since I got back, which was nice.

After I finished, Flemming invited me in for a bit of cake, which was the perfect way to finish off a good morning. After a good cuppa and ‘cinnamon snail’ I was energised to go up and double check my eagle presentation for tomorrow, and inevitably to add to it. Once I was done with this, I had a bike ride over to Jennes Sø and back along the road (keeping active as best I can) and then a quick met fixing session got me another two nets done.

Last of the leftover stew for dinner before entering DofBasen and checking out another PowerPoint presentation I’ll have to make next week, before getting the diary our early! Looking forward to Eagle Day tomorrow, lets hope we see some rovfugle at least!

Great tit (musvit)

Some of the redpoll (gråsisken) today were borderline between mealy and lesser.

The wind was too strong to open the nets so I put the trap down for an hour, but as I expected I didn’t get much interest from the one bird I saw in the garden. I occupied myself with writing the previous days diaries and entering DofBasen records that I’d forgotten to enter the night before. Michael Ancher came round for a chat and we discussed the bird activity over the past few days as the temperature had dropped significantly. I took a walk around ElleKrattet and the beach, there wasn’t much around, the highlight being a male velvet scoter.

I made a trip into town for some needed shopping, (in the sleet) and then proceeded to wash some sheets, so that there’s enough bedding when the next volunteer arrives. Got to use the new tumble drier which was a luxury I wasn’t used to a bird observatory! After the centre closed, I took advantage of the quiet to hoover the stairs, so much sand gets tracked in during the week. 

I continued doing some computer work into the evening, before dinner. I’m going to try for some thrushes tomorrow morning, so I need to be up early.

Male velvet scoter (fløjlsand) just off the shore from the observatory

It was raining this morning, so the trap wasn’t set nor the nets opened. This allowed me to continue getting ready for my presentation at the weekend, and catch up with diary updates. It’s also cleaning day (should have been yesterday, but with people in and out I made a decision to do it today). I took a brief walk along the beach, seeing my first Danish razorbill, rock pipit and red breasted merganser for the year. I also worked out the logistics for the presentation on Sunday. 

The Eagles day presentation was finished by midday, give or take some extra information I received later in the day, and the apartment was cleaned. I went for a trip to North Strand and managed to catch up with another group of snow bunting (there’s at least seven different individuals I’ve encountered, and I’m sure many more if I did a full walk from North Strand back to the Observatory via the beach). I also saw my first Danish Sparrowhawk of the year.

Once I returned I was back onto the net repairs. As usual I lost track of time whilst repairing some particularly big holes, and I didn’t finish until almost 8pm. I may try opening the nets tomorrow, as the rain might have brought some things in.

Razorbill (Alk) one of three in Kattergat from the Obs today.

Eider (Ederfugl), a nice comparison of an adult male and a subadult male. 

A late start this morning, followed by a bit of computer work. The wind changed direction and dropped entirely so the garden was devoid of birds, frustrating my ideas of ringing this morning. That being said,  its very interesting to see such weather dependent movement. I caught up with a few bits and pieces, and then went back to net repair. Gustav went for a bit of a walk up to Ellekrattet and found a nuthatch there and a kittiwake from the beach.

Anine left about midday, and Gustav and I had a nice pancake lunch, after which I tried to find his nuthatch again to no avail. There’s a lot of change happening on the point, with a lot of woodland disappearing, so it’s quite noisy and not conducive to great birding, though I know it’s for a good reason. I did see a kestrel on my way back, which was my first for Denmark this year so it wasn’t a bad walk. Gustav left mid afternoon, and I went back to fixing nets, managing to get two out of the way today, so I’m starting to get into a rhythm. Once again it went on for longer than I thought, and I didn’t finish until it was dark outside.

Dinner was leftovers, and just going over my plans for the next day, cleaning the accommodation and cracking on with my various presentations, leaving enough time to go birding if I can. .

Gustav and his glamorous assistant, celebrating another good magic show . . 

Today was the day of the of the magic show. To that end, we were up and already finishing the preparations long before the first guests came. Whilst Gustav made his last minute preparations, I prepared the ringing lab, where he would bring the children after the show finished. So many redpolls still hanging around in the garden, so I wasn’t lacking for birds but the wind was strong so I just had the ground trap running. I needn’t have worried as I managed to get 7 birds from one round in the trap, there’s just that many redpolls around. Gustav brought a large group to the lab after the shows and he gave a good talk about what I was doing as I extracted and ringed the birds.

After the visitors left, Gustav and I continued to ring the last few redpolls and I was helping him to understand the techniques of ringing and the reasons behind them. Once the last bird was ringed, Gustav and Anine cleated up the magic show, whilst I got started with a slideshow presentation I’m due to give on Eagles Day on Sunday. Gustav and Anine went and did some much needed shopping in the afternoon and saw the four snow bunting on their way back from the town. The carrion crow was also hanging around the observatory during the afternoon, first time I’ve seen it since I’ve been back, but as it’s our common crow in Britain, I confess I didn’t look that hard for it! I had a brief bike ride in the evening, going over to look at the CES ringing site as I left last year before they did major tree clearing work there, and boy has it changed a lot! 

Tonight it was Gustav’s turn to make dinner, and after that the two of them made their way into town to get some treats for their last night here, and breakfast for tomorrow morning. I continued to work on the Eagles Day presentation and my pet project of fine tuning the Birders Club video.

Gustav‘s Magic Show was very well received today. 

The view from the boardwalk. When i was here last year, this was a view dominated by reeds and woodland.

I was up a little later than previous days as I intended to ring later in the morning. I had a little bit of a seawatch before the day really began, but didn’t see much other than some migrating skylarks and the snow buntings having a day trip down from Grenen.

At midday I stuck the trap out so I could show some of the visitors how we catch and ring birds here, and to show them a redpoll in the hand, but for the first day in a week, none of them were interested in the trap or the food around it, so it was a bit of a bust. I remained in the birders club to answer any questions for visitors and to work on fine tuning the birders club film.

Later in the afternoon Gustav arrived and got settled in, we got to know each other in the flesh rather than over Facebook. I took a brief cycle ride up to Grenen to see if there was any birding to be done (there wasn’t) and took a detour on the way back looking for polecats, of which I saw some spoor. Just before dinner Gustav’s friend Anine arrived and we all discussed the tasks for tomorrow over dinner. Gustav is running a bird magic show at 11am in the the exhibition halls meeting room and we discussed the setup and the tasks afterward, such as shopping and ringing etc. We then finished off with a great game of ‘match the pair’ and a shuffleball tournament.

Fieldfare (Sjagger) at Grenen

I was up early and out at the nets. Despite my hopes, I did not get any thrushes in the morning, but nigh on 100% redpolls except for one recaptured yellowhammer that was ringed a few days ago. I kept the nets open for a little while but decided to close them and get on with net repair work until midday when there would be guests around to see the bird ringing in action.

I spent a good couple of hours on the mist net I’ve been working on for a few days, it’s heavily damaged, and in hindsight, it’s also bleached and therefore probably not worth repairing, but it serves as a good practice net. I’ve certainly improved my technique over the last few days. I set up the ground trap at midday and whilst waiting for it to catch something, I entered the diary post for the previous day. There were few visitors around at this time, so after a couple of rounds I closed the trap too, and returned to my net repair. By late afternoon I’d finally finished the first of several and set up the next net for repair tomorrow. Classically I chose both of the nets in the worst condition to start with!

After dinner I entered the DofBasen records for the day and planned the next day’s activities. Net repair is on the agenda, but also perhaps a trip to the harbour to check for white winged gulls and purple sandpipers.

A mealy redpoll (Nordlig gråsisken) a very small individual but not, in my estimation, quite meeting criteria for lesser (lille)

I was up early and out at Grenen by 9 (would have been quicker but I was birding on my way up there). Plenty of birds considering the time of year a large flock of 300 fieldfare contained two redwing, a flock of woodpigeon had a stock dove with them and there were plenty of corvids, magpies, hooded crows and 150+ jackdaws wheeling around the beach. The rough legged buzzard was still around, perched nicely on a fence post for me, if a little distant. The sea was pretty busy too, with 7 velvet scoters amongst almost 100 common, goldeneye, teal, mallard, eider. A few red throated divers flew past along with some guillemots. Some skylark were moving around, echoing what a friend of mine is finding further south, and eventually I picked up the four snow bunting on the beach, my first in Denmark. A great crested grebe on the sea was my first for Skagen, and I saw 33 species in total. I found a dead cormorant on the beach, and reflected that the name ‘great’ cormorant doesn’t really seem appropriate for a bird that seems so small in death.

After lunch I checked out the bikes, making sure the tyres were pumped up and preparing for my first trip into town to pick up some shopping. After this I spent a long time trying to find fieldfare calls for our MP3 player to hopefully catch some in the garden tomorrow morning. Trying to get a loud enough call was the issue, and whilst I have one, it’s not very loud. Hopefully it will work well with the apples on the ground though.

It’s been a long time since I got on a bike since last year, and this was possibly the worst word direction to cycle into town, as I barely moved without great effort. However it’s all good exercise and it was nice to familiarise myself with the town.

On return, I used a recipe taught to me by Michele, our Italian volunteer from last year and cooked myself pasta in a mushroom cream sauce (I’m not at all confident in the Italian to attempt to write the real name). It was good enough for a first try though. Tomorrow I intend to get up earlier than usual to try and get some thrushes in the mist nets, so unlike a lot of you on a Saturday evening, I went to bed early!

Snow bunting (snespurv) one of four on the beach northeast of the Lighthouse

’Great’ cormorant (skarv), doesn’t look so great when compared to the size of a human foot. 

This morning as I was on my own, I didn’t open the nets, and especially didn’t use the calls. Whilst I was writing the diaries and finding places to set up nets for repair I did have the ground trap running. I managed to process around 9 birds during the day, all of them redpolls. More recaptures in the trap than in the net yesterday despite the vast difference in numbers caught between them. Whilst I was working I had a visit from Michael Ancher briefly, who confirmed it was a good morning for redpolls (so I was right not to have the nets open when I was busy with other activities). Apparently we both recaptured the other sites redpolls today, still surprising that it was single figures considering how much ringing had gone on over the two days. 3 greylag geese flew over as we were chatting, my first for Skagen this year, and a mute swan had flown over during a misty period as I was setting up the trap earlier in the morning.

After a few hours, repairing nets outside was very painful for my fingers so I worked with Flemming and found a place inside where I could safely string up nets, out of the wind and cold! Hopefully this will make the job easier and quicker over the next few weeks. Before I even realised it the day was over, but I managed to spend a few minutes looking into Kattergat for any passing seabirds, though all I really saw was two species of gull and some eider.

After a pretty disastrous attempt at cooking something for dinner (will the frying pan ever be clean?!) I spent the evening entering data into DofBasen for my ringing and observation records. I intend to head up to Grenen tomorrow to get some much needed birding in so I turned in around 9pm.

Birds ringed       Birds recaptured
Gråsisken – 6      3

A mealy redpoll, clearly mocking me by perching on a rolled net . . 

Redpolls were present all day, feeding on the seeds we’d put out for them, even when I was working about 15 foot away.