Early birds

A fresh breeze from the north-east prevented us from putting up the nests for ringing this morning. When the wind is (too) strong, firstly there is less bird activity in the bushes and secondly the birds see nets inflated much more.

So it was a quiet morning for Alice and Robbe, who devoted themselves to cleaning the flat and got some paper work done. Hanelie and Manuel, on the other hand, were at Nordstrand shortly after sunrise, practically crouched into the dune to escape the sharp wind a bit. Together with a few local birders, we were soon surprised by two harriers, one of which quickly turned out to be a female Pallid Harrier Steppehøg.

The second individual was subsequently identified as this species from photographs. A good start. Otherwise, the bird migration (probably due to the weather) decreased significantly after the first hour and was also much less (visible?) than the past few days. At sea, a few Long-tailed Ducks Havlit mingled with the Common Scoters Sortand. These beautiful ducks are now in their breeding plumages. Also always a little highlight are Black Guillemots Tejst, today two birds flew just above the water surface heading east. The migration of the Arctic Skuas Almindelig Kjove continues, very beautiful to watch this elegant and powerful birds, as they often move very close to the beach and try to steal the prey from gulls or terns. In between the several Sandwich Terns Splitterne we could again manage to find some of our summery guests with red bills.

Hanelie then joined a German-Danish guided tour thankfully provided some German explanations. Highlights during the tour around the "tip" were some birds of prey, like quite a few Rough-Legged Buzzards Fjeldvåge and Kites Rød Glente & Sort Glente. There was a lot of interest in our work and an interesting exchange.

As we had postponed our regular clean-up-Saturday to today, we used the day also for sprucing up the flat. In the evening, new guests also arrived: Birte and Hans (Skagen Bird Observatory board member) are staying for a week and we are looking forward to going out together. The first thing they did was a long walk around the area, noticing many Kestrels Tårnfalk, it seems it was a good migration day for this species. Also, they passed by the Cormorant Lake Skarvsøen, realising that the birds really started off with the breeding activities, they counted almost double as many active nests than we did a week before. Some beautiful Vipers enjoying the evening sun allowed nice observations, too.