People leaving – birds coming

The weather forecast had promised a cloudy day with little wind so I told everybody to get ready for a long ringing day with good numbers. Then the weather forecast in the morning, however, showed that the clouds were not real and it was going to be very sunny – and hot. So not so many birds expected after all. Which was good too, because Mathilde had a lot to learn and both Frederik and Taima were leaving this morning so having a bit more time to chill would have been nice.

Would have been, because the birds thought differently about that. No migration still but juvenile birds keep entering our nets as though this was the new trend sport for bird youth in Skagen. Just like yesterday we had more than 20 whitethroats (tornsanger). It really is good that we ring them otherwise we would never believe that it is really always different birds. There are sooo many of them! But that was not all for today. It was at 7, everything reasonably quiet, when I arrived at a net full of tits – great tits (musvit) and blue tits (blåmejse). I was alone only with Mathilde and there were at least 20 birds there so instead of putting them in bags I called everyone to come to these nets, take the rings and we just ringed them as we took them out of the nets. There were 13 juvenile great tits and 5 juvenile blue tits. We hope many of them will survive and we will see them again some time soon. And then we will also take the time to take the measurements, promised!

When we got back after our work at that net was finished (we were really quick working all together), there was a jay (Skovskade) waiting for me to ring it (because nobody else wanted to get bitten by it). What a pretty bird – and loud!

At around 9, Frederik and Taima left to go to Copenhagen. It was great to have both of them here. A bit sad that Frederik could not get us any exciting rarity this time but he promised to get one next year! And Taima will go ringing at Blåvand Bird Observatory for the next weeks, so hopefully she can use some of her new skills there. Mathilde in the meanwhile is learning very quickly and everybody at the station now has to change from spring to autumn plumage which makes the aging suddenly challenging again – just as we all had gotten a hang of it…

Next to having many birds today we also had a good variety, some birds we hadn’t caught in a while and mostly juveniles. We finally also had our first juvenile reed warbler (rørsanger) which we had been waiting for impatiently.

And a juvenile reed bunting (rørspurv).

 

After closing there was still some net fixing to be done and a lot of data entry. The rest of the day we just rested, went grocery shopping, had dinner and then go to bed early because tomorrow we have to go CES ringing again and we will go to see how the cormorants are doing.

Ringmærkning (Kabeltrommeln):

Husrødstjert 1

Solsort 1

Gærdesmutte 1

Gulbug 2

Havesanger 2

Munk 2

Tornsanger 21

Gransanger 5

Gærdesanger 4

Musvit 15

Blåmejse 5

Kærsanger 1

Rørsanger 1

Rødhals 1

Rørspurv 1

Skovskade 1

total: 64

Folk på stationen: Mathilde Ducroz, Frank Osterberg, Martina Hillbrand, Taïma Lorentzen, Frederik Johansen, Jesper og Margit. 

Klik her for at se dagens observationer fra Dofbasen af fugle i Skagen.