Not the quiet day we expected

 Simon and Magnus' adventure had them returning to the station at around 1 o'clock in the morning, at which point it was prime time to see the aurora borealis. The skies thankfully kept clear for them to view it. Unfortunately, the rest of us had apparently decided sleeping was more important and groggily got out of bed for our daily ringing and observation routines.

Whilst Johanna, Mira and I went to Sandstormsvinget to count migrating birds. We were not expecting an amazing day for migration with the wind, but after the first hour passed, it was clear that almost no migration would occur today. The first hour after sunrise seemed to be the only time at which any proper migration occured. Even as the morning warmed up, there were no raptors to be seen in the sky until our counting period was finished.

There were some small highlights in our counts though; we did see one Dværgryle (Little Stint) flying above the beach.

After three hours of counting, I went to Kabeltromlen to check up on the ringing because nothing was happening at sea. To my surprise, nothing was happening at the ringing site either, though it was better than yesterday. Hayley and Isis decided to close the nets a little after 10 o'clock after what seemed to be a boring day. They were greeted rather rudely by a screeching Vendehals (Eurasian Wryneck) in the top shelf of one of our nets. Generally, only one of these birds is caught in Skagen Fuglestation's nets each year, so this was quite the bird to finish off our ringing session on the last day of the bird festival. It drew quite a crows after Simon announced it on Zello; with about 80-100 people coming to see us ring the bird!

Lisa Vergin posing the bird for our picture archive.

Us volunteers returned to the station feeling good about today. We got some grunt work done around the station, when it was announced over Zello that an Alpe-jernspruv (Alpine Accentor) was found at Pælebakke Klit. It was a new species for many of the volunteers, and also a first for Lisa, so it was amazing to see. We joined around 200 other birders in the area for the birding festival to try to see the bird. We were treated to amazingly close views of <10m.

Among the birds in that locality was the local Steppeørn (Steppe Eagle) and Steppehøg (Pallid Harrier) which made for a very fine twitch.

We topped the day, and the birding festival off with an open grill for all of the birders to blow off a little steam and enjoy each others company.

 Ringing (Kabeltromlekrattet):

Todays observations in DOFbasen from observers in the area

Sum of observations of raptors on DOFbasen from today

People: Séan Walsh, Hayley Land, Isis Khalil, Magnus Houen Lauritsen, Simon Kiesé, Johanna Veentjer, Simon S. Christiansen, Lisa Vergin, Søren, Jørgen Hulbæk, Knud Pedersen, and Oluf Lou.