Sunshine, wind and coconut macaroons

Pablo and Amelie opened nets to ring in the lighthouse garden this morning where Jeppe and I joined them a little later. We actually caught several birds, including a few Tree sparrows (Skovspurv) and even a House Sparrow (Gråspurv).

In between rounds, Amelie and Pablo checked all remaining sheets:

We closed nets at noon, and Amelie uploaded the volunteer recruitment video on Youtube. She also updated the ringing guideline with new information about the two subspecies of Bullfinches (Dompap) and their respective wing lengths. I baked coconut macaroons while everyone else went to the beach for a walk and to watch seabirds.

I went out afterwards and watched a couple of Razorbills (Alk) feeding only 20 meters from the shore - I'd never seen them that close before!

Jeppe had the opportunity to learn about the different bird species. They saw a Purple Sandpiper (Sortgrå ryle), a Long-tailed duck (Havlit), Common scoters (Sortand), Northern gannets (Sule), and Razorbills (Alk), which were actually quite close to the beach. They even saw a beautiful ringed male Eider (Edderfugl):

Afterwards, we all went to Gammel Skagen to enjoy a beautiful sunset over the horizon:

Simon had a meeting with the director of BirdLife Denmark today as well as a meeting with the financial director. A radio tag arrived in the mail which we will use to show to visitors on the next guided tours. This radio tag is different from the GPS tags that we put on the Blackbirds (Solsort) for the ICARUS project. There was another tracking project with Robins (Rødhals), which got radio tags glued to their back rather than put on as a harness.

Lone and Lars went out to visit Martin and Knud at World’s End 3. The migration count today was much better than it has been recently: They saw 2000 Kittiwakes (Ride), 150 Red-throated divers (Rødstrubede lom), a flock of Snow Buntings (Snespurv), as well as a small flock of four Coal tits (Sortmejse) coming in from the sea. The highlight was an adult peregrine falcon (Vandrefalk) that came in over the water as well, and it even had a color ring on it!

Photo by: Knud Pedersen

We are looking forward to going ringing at Kabeltromlen again tomorrow. The weather looks great for the next few days – fingers crossed that we get lots of birds in the nets!

Ringmærkning (Fyrhavn):

Munk – Blackcap: 1

Blåmejse – Blue tit: 3

Musvit – Great tit: 1

Gråspurv – House sparrow: 1

Skovspurv – Tree sparrow: 7

Bogfinke – Chaffinch: 1

Grønirisk – Greenfinch: 1

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

People: Pablo Macías, Jeppe Overgaard, Knud Pedersen, Amelie Zeller, Martin Grienenberger, Simon S. Christiansen, Christina Stinn, Lars & Lone Madsen