Blowing our mind

Or as I may say: it’s windy out there ! So windy that the nets stayed closed today… Much to our delight, as we broke a new record:

Hanelie, Diana and I headed to Grenen for the daily migration counts this morning. After 4 hours shivering in the gust, while sand covered our faces and buried our personal equipment, we counted a total of 1560 velvet scoters Fløjlsand heading south-east ! The previous record at Grenen was 1015 velvet scoters on the 1^st of October 2020. Of course we were too busy counting the birds that we didn’t take pictures of the big flocks migrating ; the biggest group was composed of 150 birds ! More birds where counted after we left. The numbers from there can be seen on dofbasen.

We also managed to see red-breasted merganser Toppet Skallesluger, red-throated diver Rødstrubet Lom, sandwich terns Splitterne, and brant goose Knortegås.

Colour ring resighting on roosting gulls was not easy, as the wind shaked our tripods and created “rivers of sand” that covered the gulls’ legs ; but Diana still managed to read three of them, one of which was ringed as a chick in 2014 in Norway !

(Here above: one of the rings read today)

While Max worked on the monthly report, Frank was out birding. On his 2 hour walk, he encountered many redstarts Rødstjert, pied & spotted flycatchers Broget &Grå Fluesnapper, crested tits Topmejse, as well as a juvenile hen harrier Blå Kærhøg, kestrel Tårnfalk, common buzzard Musvåge, and also a snipe Dobbeltbekkasin; his trained ears even picked up the song of a green woodpecker Grønspætte. (Am I trying to learn Danish bird names by writing this long list of observations ? The answer is yes.)

The afternoon was focused on maintenance tasks : after going shopping (thanks to our guest Anders who gave us a lift), Diana and I helped Per, who works at the Exhibition, to put the mat down and back up again, as the rope got away.

Meanwhile Simon, under careful surveillance of Hanelie, moved the wifi-antenna higher up on the mast, in hope it will ease data reception of radio tags deployed on birds : the MOTUS receiver can pick up their radio signals up to 15 km radius.

We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to catch wheatear Stenpikker with clapnets ; however, after teasing our trapping team for more than 1 hour by feasting on delicious worms next to the trigger, our only candidate flew off free of any ring. Let’s hope we’ll catch some birds tomorrow, despite the announced wind and rain.

Our english volunteer Frank just heard of the sad news ; the Queen is dead, bless the Queen.

People: Solenn Boucher, Max Laubstein, Simon Christiansen, Frank Osterberg, Hanelie Sidhu, Diana Sciandra and our guests Jette & Anders

Todays Observations from the area on DOFBasen