Birds, Bats and Buddies

I joined the ringing team this morning and got my first proper lesson in the artful skill of ringing a bird. The day started at 5am, riding our bikes down to Kabeltromlen and putting up the nets. Walking the so-called “rounds” from net to net to check for birds, wearing waders as the sun was rising, was a really lovely way to start the day and get to know the people on the team. One of the ringers morning-routines is also to call out a number of how many birds will be caught on the day and todays guesses varied from high 40’s to 60. The skilled and patient supervisor Lisa showed me how to get birds out of the nets, how to handle the delicate and tiny little birds, and how to ring, sex and age them while making it look easy, which is it not! The sun rose and the nets got busy. Coal Tits (Sortmejse) were the main act with 21 captures, but the best finds were a Tree Pipit (Skovpiber) and a Common Redpoll (Stor Gråsisken) and also known as Mealy Redpoll and both were new species for me. The day ended with exactly 50 birds, which meant that Selina won the daily comp! Congratulations.

One of the many captured Coal Tits (Sortmejse) from today.

Photo of the Common Redpoll (Stor Gråsisken) from today

While some of us were out ringing, the observers also had a pretty eventful morning at Worlds End III (Grenen). They saw Arctic Skua (Almindelig Kjove), Bar-tailed Godwits (Lille Kobbersneppe) and a Red-necked Grebe (Gråstrubet Lappedykker), but the biggest suprise came in the shape of yet another bat who flew in and landed on the dunes during the counting session. Florian was able to take pictures on the tracks of the bats, which pretty clearly show how it was crawling along the sand, which is pretty cool.

Tracks from the crawling bat. You can clearly see the marks that it's spur-like thumbs have left in the sand. 

This afternoon was spent cleaning back at Det Grå Fyr and with everyone helping, the place is now looking clean and (mostly) sand-free again.

Tonight marks a special night for the team (especially for our Storm Petrel lover, Sarah) as today is the last day that we will be trying to catch Storm Petrels (Stormsvaler) in the beach nets. The plan is to finish with a bang and leave the nets open until sunrise – let’s see if we get lucky.

The hopeful team putting up the last Storm Petrel net of the season.

Ringing totals:

Rødstjert 2
Løvsanger 1
Rødhals 2
Sortmejse 21
Jernspurv 1
Lille gråsisken 5
Stor gråsisken 1
Sivsanger 1
Rørsanger 1
Munk 7
Rørspurv 3
Skovpiber 1
Havesanger 1
Tornsanger 1
Blåmejse 1
Gransanger 1
Total 50

Highlights from World's End III
Arctic Skua (Almindelig Kjove)
Barre-tailed Godwits (Lille Kobbersneppe)
Red-necked Grebe (Gråstrubet Lappedykker)

Obervations from the area can be found here. 

People:
Barbara Leone, Gabriel Axelsson, Florian Hatt, Selina Veng, Janna Ouedraogo, Sarah Partridge, Simon S. Christiansen og Lisa.