Ringing Again

First of all, I should say that I am happy to be here at the bird observatory again after almost 12 months. Again, I decided to spend most of my summer holidays here and instead of relaxing and sleeping a lot I sleep as little as I can and try to see and ring as many birds as possible. I hope I can sleep when the school year starts again. Unfortunately, the weather has not been favorable so far and we couldn’t ring as much as I had wanted. Last night the weather forecast was a bit unclear about what the wind situation would be like this morning, so I got up an hour later than normal for opening the nets but the winds were still too strong. Opening the nets in too strong winds would endanger the health of the birds and that is, of course, not what we want.

Instead of leaving then, I stayed at the lighthouse and watched a rather beautiful sunrise, while waiting for the winds to die down. After an hour or so, I decided we could finally go. We opened the nets two hours later than normal, meaning that the first net check was at 6.30am which feels almost like lunch time if you are used to getting up at half past two in the night. Luckily the sun was hiding behind a small band of clouds for the first hours so despite the late hours we could still catch a reasonable amount of birds. Nothing special apart from a flock of baby blue tits (blåmejse) who were probably just discovering the surroundings of their birth place. I wonder if the ringing experience changed their view of their world. Seeing that they are blue tits, however, it probably only encouraged them to fight whenever they are in danger showing them that it may end in their lucky release.

We also caught a few of the redpolls (gråsisken) that keep circling the area, so we could determine that they are adults probably celebrating their freedom after the kids have left hotel mama. This pair probably still belong together as they were calling each other and the male entered the net reacting to the females calls while she was being released (the male is recognizable by the red head, giving them their English name, while the Danish name applies to both male and female so is maybe a bit less sexist...)

We saw a bittern (rørdrum) fly by and land in the same place where they were supposedly breeding last year, so with some luck in the next few days we will also see some young bitterns in the area. Other than that we also did not have any particularly interesting observations. With quite a few birds in the nets and all the volunteers eager to learn we were busy enough just with that.

Gunnar guided a hiking tour for the Lighthouse in the area and they came by the ringing after 10am and the visitors were lucky enough to see birds ringed despite the late morning, so that was also good. And a consolation after the nightjar (natravn) tour last night did not get to see but only hear nightjars.

After we got home Rita cooked a delicious lunch out of leftovers and then we all had a nap. The guests left before we arrived back but not without reserving a week’s stay for next year. We would like to thank them for their company and also for their help on the nightjar tour last night. Mark Desholm (former head of the nature department of DOF which is responsible for running our bird observatory) arrived with two of his (grown up) children in the early afternoon (environmentally friendly by train) and is eager to get his hands on birds again after too much office work in the last months. Unfortunately, the weather doesn’t look all that good for their stay but to start off, tomorrow should be the single best day for a long time with almost no wind throughout the day. We will try to make as much use of it as possible from morning until night. I wonder if that is the reason why Simon decided to come back early from his holiday…

Keep your fingers crossed for it to be good ringing tomorrow!

Newly ringed birds at Kabeltrommeln:

Blåmejse (Blue tit) 7

Musvit (Great tit) 3

Gærdesanger (Lesser Whitethroat) 2

Tornsnager (Common Whitethroat) 7

Gransanger (Chiffchaff) 1

Lille Gråsisken (Lesser Redpoll) 3

Total: 23

Local Observations of the Day in DOFBasen

People: Rita DeLucco, Alice Scalzo, Nathan Delmas, Max Laubstein, Martina Hillbrand, Mark, Malthe and Lærke Desholm