Three twitches in one day

After helping to set up the storm petrel nets in the evening before today, I went to bed, hoping to be woken as often as possible from the others to see some exciting birds they caught. After a few hours Sarah came into the room and shouted: „Wake up, we caught a Nightjar!“ We immediately got up and went down to the Lab where this fascinating bird was waiting for us. I'd never held a bird in my hands before, so this Nightjar (Natravn) was the first one for me! When we let him go again, he said goodbye by first flying into Selina's face but then disappearing behind the lighthouse.

The beautiful nightjar (natravn) for which we all got up to see.

In the morning I went out with Sarah to Worlds End III for another morning of migration count. Knud was back today and was a great help with the count. The migration was rather slow, so Knud also kept an eye out for Caspian gulls (Kaspisk Måge). After two hours, he went down to the beach to read some of the gulls' rings. Then Barbara came to relieve Sarah, who went to her well-deserved sleep. The migration picked up speed again, a dark morph Arctic/Long-tailed skua (Almindelige/Lille Kjove) moved to northwest and a Merlin (Dværgfalk) flew in from the sea at high speed. To round things off, a small raptor, most likely Marsh harrier (Rørhøg) came in from the sea.

In the meantime, Lisa, Janna, Gabriel and Selina had ringed some nice birds, for example a Common Snipe (Dobbeltbekkasin), a Great spotted woodpecker (Stor Flagspætte) and many Blackcaps (Munk). Barbara and I also came along for the last round so that I could gain some more experience with handling birds.

After a quick lunch, Barbara, Selina, Gabriel and I got in the car to see the reported pair of Black-Winged Kites (Blå Gente) in Midtjylland. I took a short nap in the car and also used the journey to write this blog. It's my first one, by the way, and I'm also the first volunteer from Switzerland at the Skagen Fuglestation and really looking forward to stay here for the next three months until the end of the season. But back to the Black-winged Kites. We got some distant but still very nice views of the pair that was carrying nesting material from time to time. In my opinion it‘s one of the most beautiful raptors existing out there!

In the meantime Janna tried to do our second twitch of the day. A Red-breasted Flycatcher (Lille Fluesnapper) had been called out on Zello. But unfortunately the bird didn't show up again.

In the evening we went up the lighthouse to make our third twitch today. After some minutes waiting, we saw what we had hoped to see: the blood moon! What a nice way to end this day!

Nice blood moon seen from the lighthouse

Ringing totals:

Ringing KAB
Dobbeltbekkasin 1
Stor flagspætte 1
Musvit 1
Rødstjert 4
Sivsanger 1
Rødhals 10
Gærdesanger 1
Gærdesmutte 1
Jernspurv 1
Broget fluesnapper 2
Rørsanger 1
Sortmejse 3
Munk 17
Tornsanger 1
Blåmejse 1
Gransanger 2
Fuglekonge 2
Træløber 1
Total 51

Ringing Fyr 
Natravn 1

Highlights from World's End III
Arctic/Long-tailed Skua (Almindelig/Lille Kjove)
Merlin (Dværgfalk)
Caspian gulls (Kaspisk Måge)
Red-breasted Merganser (Toppet Skallesluger)

Obervations from the area can be found here. 

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