Coal day

Waking up after a night with such a big surprise felt great. I was jumping out of my bed, grabbing my overnight oats, checking the rain forecast and taking may jacket to head out. Still thinking about the odd image from last night, when Cora and I headed to the net in the darkness and we approached the Nightjar (Natravn) and then seeing the Nightingale (Sydlig Nattergal) hanging next to it. What a big surprise!

Smooth Newt (Lille Vandsalamander) at Kabeltromlen.

But that was yesterday and we had high hopes to continue our slide on the slide of happiness. While opening nets at Kabeltromlen we already noticed that the rain last night stopped some migration and numbers would be lower today. That did not stop us from ringing three young female Common Redstarts (Rødstjert). The best round came surprisingly late when we closed and flock of 10 Coal Tits (Sortmejse) decided to get a shiny ring.

Happy ringers with ten Coal Tits (Sortmejse): Simon, Louise, Youri, Cora and Markus.

Coal Tits seem to erupt now, but I’m not sure why. At least until now. Yesterday Falsterbo (Sweden) ringed 22, quite a lot for August and we had 70 flying over Kabeltromlen. A friend of me is currently in Lista (Norway), where they have even more migrating – even a flock with 97 together! I’m excited to see how this pattern continues. All birds we ringed were juveniles, what you can recognize by a moult limit usually somewhere between GC 6-8 and young PC. All birds had a low fat score. I just made this small graph to give you a first impression of our measurements of these influx tits. We like tits!

Wing Length (mm) and Body Mass (g) in the ten Coal Tits (Sortmejse) we ringed today.

The counters had a relaxed morning out at World‘s End 3 with just a little migration but some fun birds. They got good views of a Velvet Scoter (Fløjlsand) – a new species for Sarah! At Grenen one Great White Egret (Sølvhejre) and even more surprisingly a Cuckoo (Gøg) made a migration attempt.

In the afternoon we prepared for nightcatching tonight. That included shopping, napping and finishing all other data tasks.

We just had a nice dinner by Rose and we are preparing now for nightcatching. I will update this during the night, so stay tuned.

Update: 00:36 am

This blog posts might be one of the most up-to-date ones, I‘ve ever written. That’s easily justified by the bird we just caught. Look at this beautiful (adult) Great Snipe (Tredækker)!

Streaked everywhere!

 After passing by Saltum Strand, where we saw two Little Stints (Dværgryle), we headed towards Lerup Klit. Here we met Johan, who ringed quite some Snipes on these fields the past few years. When we went out of the cars we immediately heard the flight call of a Bittern (Rørdrum). After this good start we walked over the field. There were shooting starts and the calls of Red Deer. Then Johan spotted a Great Snipe (Tredækker) in the thermal and just a few seconds later it was in his hand. This bird was ringed by him three days (or nights) ago. It’s good to see it’s doing great and it gaines 5 g of weight in these days. With the for Great Snipes typical fat score of 9 (maximum) it felt like a small canon ball. Just soft and warm.

In total there were 5 Great Snipes on the field, but we‘ll try our luck on another field now. That means I‘ll have a short nap in SSC‘s car now to be fit for Kabeltromlen-ringing in just a few hours. Good night!

Happy night team.

Chiffchaff (Gransanger) 3

Common Whitethroat (Tornsanger) 3

Garden Warbler (Havesanger) 1

Blackcap (Munk) 5

Coal Tit (Sortmejse) 10

Common Redstart (Rødstjert) 3

Reed Bunting (Rørspurv) 1

Reed Warbler (Rørsanger) 2

People: Rosemary Fricke, Markus Kemp Clément, Simon Kiesé, Louise Buksti-Ladefoged, Sarah Partridge, Cora Köberle, Simon S. Christiansen, Youri Van der Horst, Johan Funder, Morten Christensen and our guests Grete and Stig.