Back to winter

When I went into the kitchen this morning, you could see the dark but reddish sky shining over the dark blue sea. It lookes amazing and my motivation for this day was really high. This changed a bit, when we went our and felt the freezing cold wind for the first time of the day and we knew, this wind will be our company for the rest of the day. Luckily, Lars gave Magnus and me a lift to Nordstrand, where we started the count. The numbers of Gannets (Sule) and Sisken (Grønsisken) where nice over the day, but there was literally nothing else to count. At least the morning sun gave the landscape some nice colours.

In the third hour four Arctic Skuas (Almindelig Kjove) showed up at the same time so I thought that will be the only highlight of the count. This changed, when just a few minutes later a (the) 2nd cy Glaucous Gull (Gråmåge) popped up at the beach, headed in our direction and flew so close over our heads, that the lush views (with and without the binos) made me laugh. Three hours without good migration where enough for this day!

Glaucous Gull (Gråmåge) - picture by Oliver Madsen

The ringers experiences the same slowness, but made the very best out of it. Keeping the nets open, even if there were rounds without any birds got rewarded with two birds, that made Hanelie, Hayley and Isis smile. The first Lesser Whitethroat (Gærdesanger) of the ringing year got more attention, than this species (of this subspecies) will ever get again. Look at this cool passerine!

The biggest bird of the day was definitely this female Sparrowhawk (Spurvehøg).

After coming back from the count we had a very nice breakfast. Magnus fried some eggs and I made a good black tea. It was a very nice birthday breakfast for me and it  was nice to warm up again. At one point we went up the lighthouse with a scope. The overview is amazing and we saw one Merlin (Dværgfalk) passing by. In the twenty minutes 90 Curlews (Storspove) migrated east, which was a lot in comparision to the previous counts.

Even special days like this are used for data entry and we compared some numbers with those of the last years and talked about arrival dates of some possible scarcities, which could turn up soon. Until now the numbers of raptors are very low, mainly due to the weather of the past weeks. No, I don’t complain – the Steppe Eagle yesterday was amazing! But it is interesting to learn what this tells us about bird migration and which factors can affect it. Otherwise for example Guillemots (Lomvie) have a strong year so far – far over the average. Let’s see what the season will bring. Or what today will bring. It’s just 4:44 pm, so let’s hope, that there are plenty of reasons to edit the blog later. ;-)

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.

People: Hayley Land, Isis Khalil, Hanelie Sidhu, Magnus Houen Lauritsen, Simon Kiesé, Simon S. Christiansen, Lars Askholm, our guests Oliver, Margit and Claus.