A black day for the black guillemot "tejst"

Good morning!

Although this blog post had some delay, it’s worth reading it. Today we could finally go out for the morning observations after some foggy days. The weather was quite harsh with the wind speed going from 14m/s to 21m/s. The land migration was very slow but we saw some really exciting species over the sea. The first surprise was the great northern "islom" diver flying together with a red-throated diver "rødstrubet lom" which made it easy to compare their general structure and size (jizz). He landed in front of us, but with the wind, he wasn’t easy to observe. Meanwhile, Marion made a walk to the cormorant lake to search for roosting whooper swans "sangsvane" because there were a lot flying around in the morning. She wasn’t lucky and went back to the station to continue working on her master thesis. In the last hour, the sea migration slowed down too, the calm before the storm. Suddenly, I had a dark bird in my scope with a big white mirror on the wings. Hanelie announced it as a weird velvet scoter but once he was close, we had a great observation of a black guillemot "tejst" in summer plumage. The first one for me! With the adrenaline I had since this morning, I cycled back at my pace and made spicy hot chocolate for those who were a bit later.

(Searching shelter in a bunker while watching birds)

The afternoon started really chill with resting and entering data. Meanwhile, Julie had arrived but was sleeping to recover from a busy night. She is a Danish birdwatcher staying here until Sunday, but she will come back in May if she likes it here.

When I finished the data, I had to go out to get some fresh air. Hanelie thought the same and together, we made a walk to the harbor. Along our way, we found some really cool bunkers, dead common scoter "sortand" and unfortunately a black guillemot too…

(black guillemot summer plumage)

Once arrived in the harbor, the weather was really annoying and it began to rain. We tried the station's camera Simon brought us, but we struggled too much with the different settings to take good pictures. We really enjoyed our walk and therefore almost missed the evening meeting. When we arrived after a successful hitchhiking attempt, Alice was working further on the Nocmig and Julie explained to the others how to work with the camera. We continued the evening with the meeting where we said goodbye to our guests Bjarne and Susanne. They had a lovely stay here and saw three species that were new to them. During the day they had a free coffee in Brøndums Hotel and met a birdwatcher from Skagen, who had a citrine wagtail "citronvipstjert" in his garden some years ago.

Simon had a busy day as usual with a meeting with the people from Aarhus University, writing on the report of yesterday's meeting and he did some groceries.

Today’s observations in Dofbasen from observers in the area

Sum of the Raptors in the area based on observations typed into Dofbasen the same day

From tomorrow on it’s gonna be nice weather for both us and the birds.

Carpe diem and enjoy the nature

Robbe

People: People: Simon S. Christiansen, Robbe Cool, Hanelie Sidhu, Alice Scalzo, Marion L'Huillier-Hunsinger, Julie Kokholm, Susanne Olsen and Bjarne Johansson