A ringing trip

Today Hanelie and I got up early in the morning to see if the weather was good for gull catching at the beach at dawn, unfortunately it was raining so we had to hold off of trying.

Simon came by around 10 to get us to go and do some ringing projects further abroad for the day.

When we drove past Hulsig there was a Great Egret standing in the pond.

First we went back to Tårs for the Eurasian Kestrels which had grown significantly since last time we saw them and we put satellite tags on them with Lars for a monitoring project that looks at the movements of the Kestrels. There were some nice Corn Buntings singing nearby while we learned about the tagging process.

Collecting Kestrels photo Andrew Jacobs

Our second location was at former volunteer Tue’s house where his family had nesting Common Swifts that we ringed, they were surprisingly large and quiet with very grippy feet. There was also a nest box with a Eurasian Tree Sparrow in it, however there was no eggs or chicks in the box so we’re unsure if it was just hanging out in the box or not.

Common Swift photo Andrew Jacobs

The third location we went to was to scout out a Western Barn Owl nest box in a barn. We checked around the barn for the Barn Owl and couldn’t find it in the rafters. We put up a ladder next to the box to check for any possible chicks and the Barn Owl shot out of the barn full speed, however there were no eggs or chicks in nest but this location could be good to come back to in the future for the station.

Barn Owl box photo Andrew Jacobs

We headed back to the station and picked up the new Volunteer Emma.

Tonight we will try some night catching around the lighthouse for waders, terns and nightjars, setting up a few more nets to use.

Observations from the area on DOFbasen today

Ringing totals

Eurasian Kestrel 3 (Tårnfalk)

Common Swift 3 (Mursejler)

Highlights

Western Barn Owl (Slørugle)

Great Egret (Sølvhejre)

Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Skovspurv)

Corn Bunting (Bomlærke)

People: Cora Köberle, Hanelie Sidhu, Andrew Jacobs, Pauline Nähring, Simon Sigaard Christiansen, Lars Bo Jakobsen, Emma Fabre,  and our guests Mark Desholm and his Family.