Triple Skua

After having counted so many Fulmars (Mallemuk) and Kittiwakes (Ride) on our little seawtaching session yesterday evening, expectations were high for today’s migration count held by János, Dylan and Sverre at World’s End 3 (Jesper and Mette also joined them at some point). But in terms of numbers they were a bit disappointed, only very few birds were migrating both on the sea and inland. However, it was truly quality over quantity today: With a Great Skua (Storkjove) and even a Pomarine Skua (Mellemkjove), they had two very good highlights. The Arctic Skuas (Almindelig Kjove) completed their Skua-triplet. There has also been a White-billed Diver (Hvidnæbbet Lom) called out on Zello, which unfortunately no-one of us saw. Meanwhile, Alvin and I were ringing at Kabeltromlen. It was a bit too windy to open all the nets and we also had to ring down by the tent for a period of time, but still we had a good time.

Opening nets in moonlight.

For the first couple of hours it was only the two of us, later Simon came by – and then a large crowd: Both people from Swarovski Optik and a group of danish birders visited Kabeltromlen today, in the end we had about forty interested people around. Simon introduced them to our work and the practice of ringing in general. Unfortunately, we didn’t catch a bird in the last round which we could have shown to them, but still we hope they enjoyed their visit.

Many visitors at Kabeltromlen today.

Later, some of the Swarovski employees also met us at the station – and had a nice surprise for us: A cutting edge stabilised scope for us to test for some time. Thank you very much for this opportunity! While all the others were napping, Sverre went for a birding walk around the area, met some people and talked to many locals. This way he got a great overview of all the different locations. Jesper and Mette spent their afternoon at Saftevandsbakken. Later, we opened the net in the lighthouse garden and caught a few birds including a Lesser Whitethroat (Gærdesanger); overall a much more relaxed form of ringing compared to the more adventurous “expedition” ringing at Kabeltromlen.

Blackcap (Munk) ringed in the garden.

In the evening after dinner, János and Sverre went out to Grenen again, where they again observed high numbers of Fulmars (Mallemuk) as well as a resting Short-eared Owl (Mosehornugle) with slightly weird eyes.

Short-eared Owl (Mosehornugle) with a squinting eye. It's giving us a mad look!

People: Alvin Johansson, János Schadl, Julian Helbig, Dylan Daunt, Simon S. Christiansen, Sverre Dahl Porsgaard, Jesper & Mette