Ringing Preparation and a Strange Vehicle

A rainy and stormy morning kept us from going out for migration count today. Only János, brave and unflinching as he is, packed his things and left to face the elements. It was only after a few meters that he had to realize the winds and the rain blowing directly in his face were just too strong, and so he returned without having counted a single bird. That way the first half of the day took place indoors and resulted in a finally fixed ringing tent, a lot of ringing sheets entered and checked together with Simon who came over, recorded sound data being assessed, as well as some fresh bird drawings.

As the weather cleared up towards the afternoon, Alix, Alvin and I decided to transport the required metal poles to Kabeltromeln in order to set up the mist nets there over the course of the next days, so we’ll be able to start the ringing season, which we all are very excited for, while János stayed inside to finish his computer work. Because of the large number of poles needed (84 to be precise), we had to think of a clever way to move them all the way from the lighthouse to the ringing site. Thus, we started engineering and came up with a crafty and bizarre-looking vehicle consisting of two bikes and two bags strung between them carrying the poles. Surprisingly this improvised device functioned very well, and Alvin and I were able to push it quite comfortably the whole way without it falling apart. We stored our cargo at Kabeltromeln and biked back, happy that everything worked out even better than expected. After this fulfilled mission, we had some great banana bread Alvin and Alix had prepared earlier.

A creative solution to transport the poles.

Everything safely arrived at its destination.

This evening, the fifth volunteer, Dylan from Scotland, will arrive. We’re looking forward to welcoming him! Tomorrow morning we want to try catching the Snow Buntings (Snespurv) at Grenen by alluring them with the seeds we’ve already put out. Wish us luck!

Link to today’s observations in DOFbasen from observers in the area

Summary of todays raptor migration on DOFbasen