Fantastisk Birthday

Today is my birthday and when I woke up and walked into the kitchen, Florian and Janna sang happy birthday to me and presented me with my birthday card. The ringers had forgotten the paint for the new kabeltromlen, so dropped it off on my way to World’s End 3 and got another birthday serenade! I am told this was not planned. Janna left this morning to return to Germany. Her visit was far too short, but we are always happy to see her!

My birthday card made by the crew with a little auk (søkonge), robin (rødhals), northern long-tailed tit (nordlig halemejse), goldcrest (fuglekonge), and blue tit (blåmejse). Photo by Miles

Florian and I had a great morning at the migration count. Activity was good, with lots of black-legged kittiwakes (ride) and razorbills (alk). We had three little auks (søkonge), not as many as yesterday, but they are always cool to see. So cute and round! While checking the resting gannets (sule) in Kattegat, I spotted a tubenose (stormfugl) flying to the northwest. It was dark with pale patches on the underwings, a sooty shearwater (sodfarvet skråpe)! It was quite close and everyone got good looks, including Anton and Ole, who had just been discussing their interest in seeing one. It is a lovely birthday present to get a visit from the ‘King of Migration’ and I pleased to be the one to call it out. Other highlights were a lesser black-backed gull (sildemåge), that appeared to be of the Baltic subspecies (Larus fuscus fuscus), which is very rare here. Adults of this subspecies have a very dark mantle that blends into the wingtips and especially long wings, which makes them stand out. There are some finer points of the identification, to separate them from the variable intermedius but that is above my pay grade. We also saw a sand martin (digesvale), which I have not seen since 21 September!

A sunny morning at World's End 3 for the migration count. Photo by Miles

Mara, Amira, and Lisa had a good morning at the ringing. It was rather windy, so they were only able to open half the nets yet still managed to catch 63 blue tits (blåmejse) with 88 ringed in total. Despite several busy blue tit rounds (Amira was ringing them nonstop for over an hour!) there were also some quiet rounds when Lone and Anton were able to ring. Today was the first time Anton has ringed, and he started off strong with several blue tits, a bullfinch (dompap), and a goldcrest (fuglekonge). After they closed the nets, 4 waxwings (silkehale) flew over. A nice highlight to end on!

In the afternoon, Florian, Lise, and Lone went out on a fulmar walk and despite having low expectations for what they would find, they had great success. They found 1 guillemot (lomvie), 1 fulmar (mallemuk), and 1 little auk (søkonge)! The fulmars are especially valuable for us to collect, because we are collaborating with Aarhus University to study the accumulation of plastic in fulmar stomachs.

Dead little auk (søkonge) found during the fulmar walk. Photo by Florian

I had a quiet afternoon attempting to catch up on some work. I went for a lovely dip in the sea with Amira before she baked me a birthday cake. Lise cooked us some delicious vegetable soup and we opened up the bottle of blood orange soda we bought to celebrate the Pallas’s Leaf Warbler. This evening, while writing up the blog, I got a call from Gabriel, who sang the Swedish birthday song to me! He has been doing moss, mushroom, and lichen surveys in the mountains in northern Sweden since leaving here a few weeks ago and has been sending some really cool photos. It was so great to hear from him and a lovely end to a fantastisk birthday.

Ringing (Kabeltromlen):

Highlights from World’s End 3:

Today’s observations from the area can be seen here.

People: Mara Glane, Florian Hatt, Amira Nuseibeh, Miles Scheuering, Lise Mastrup, Ole and Anton, and our guests Lars and Lone