Redstart, Risengrød and a Really cold swim!

This morning was VERY grey but most importantly, rainless and so János, Florian and I were keen to venture out along the beach and towards World’s End 3. We did some very relaxed seawatching for a couple of hours and, although it was generally not a busy day for migration, we had some lovely highlights, including a beautiful Black Guillemot (Tejst), a Black-throated Diver (Sortstrubet Lom) and some porpoises (Marsvin) popping up between the waves from time to time.

Florian checked the bushes behind the first line of dunes for rare buntings and saw a nice Hen Harrier (Blå Kærhøg) and then we then headed out to the tip and along the beach, where there were plenty of Sanderling (Sandløber) and the tide was much lower than yesterday, leaving lots of seaweed, rubbish and animal bones on the beach.

On our way back to the bird observatory, we met Miles, Lise and Frey and walked back together to have lunch. Miles had been for a nice morning run past Jennes Sø and the Nature Centre and then the three of them had walked to Kabeltromlen and spotted lots of Bullfinch (Dompap), Starlings (Stær), a Sparrowhawk (Spurvehøg) and heard some Bearded Reedlings (Skægmejse). Then the afternoon was dedicated to deep cleaning our lighthouse apartment ready for the end of the season. We scrubbed and vacuumed every corner, wiped every window and surface, and even took the carpets outside for a shake.

Just as János and I were whacking the carpets to shake out all the sand, we heard an interesting bird call in the courtyard of the lighthouse. János recognised the call as a Black Redstart (Husrødstjert), so we immediately dropped our carpet and stick and searched the skies around us. It flew across from the roof of the bike shed to the roof of the lighthouse and then dropped down out of sight and we never found it again. Without our binoculars with us we could only say that it looked like a female-type Black Redstart, which is slightly frustrating because at this time of year it could quite possibly be the much rarer central Asian subspecies (phoenicuroides).

Once we’d finished all our cleaning duties, Miles and I went for our final sea swim of our stay in Skagen. It was definitely the most challenging and coldest dip of our time here but strangely still really fun, and we even saw a huge orange jellyfish floating in the waves close to us which was very cool! We also welcomed Jonas this afternoon who was a previous volunteer here in Skagen back in 2021. For dinner, Lise and Frey are cooking us all a traditional Danish Christmas meal called Risengrød which already smells delicious.

Today is our penultimate day in Skagen and also sadly my final time writing the blog; I really hope you’ve all enjoyed hearing about our experiences and hopefully I’ll be back again in the future!

Standard ringing finished

Link to today’s observations from the Skagen area

People: Miles Scheuering, János Schadl, Florian Hatt, Amira Nuseibeh, Lise Mastrup and our guest Frey Mastrup