Our Lucky Charm Dylan

Because the past mornings have been rather quiet in terms of bird migration, we have now started to assign this task to only one of us at a time. Today, that person was János, so he went out to Sandormsvinget, and actually had quite a good time there with surprisingly many birds – especially high numbers of Chaffinches (Bogfinke), Crossbills (Lille Korsnæb) and Canada Geese could be observed on migration, as well as a Great Northern Diver (Islom), two Northern Shovelers (Skeand), and a Golden Oriole (Pirol). Since János covered the counting, that meant that Alvin, Dylan Olga and I could all go ringing together, joined by Kirsten.

First bird of the day: Lesser Redpoll (Lille Gråsisken).

We didn’t have as many birds today, but still between one and five each round, and among them two good catches: The first one was a Red-spotted Bluethroat (Nordlig Blåhals), a beautiful male which even made Simon and János come to visit us at Kabeltromlen.

Fantastic male Bluethroat (Nordlig Blåhals).

At some point on the last round in standard time, Dylan said to Alvin: “There will be a jammy bird around the corner”, and when he got closer to see there was a Blackcap (Munk) in the net: “This one will have a cool foreign ring.” — And so it was! The female Blackcap really had a ring from Barcelona around its leg; this is far beyond coincidence, Dylan must be a fortune teller at this point, otherwise I couldn’t explain :) What an interesting recapture!

Female Blackcap with a ring from Barcelona!

In fact, Dylan has already been very lucky this morning: At around 06:00, János spotted a possible Black-headed Bunting (Hætteværling) perched on an elderflower tree in the distance when looking inland and called it out. Since it must have been quite close to Kabeltromlen, Dylan went to look for it as soon as he could, and actually saw it from only about a 5 meters distance. But it flew off almost instantly, and disappeared into the shrubs never to be seen again by anybody. Anyhow, the evidence we have makes us confident enough to identify it as a female Black-headed Bunting (Hætteværling).

Distant scope view of the female Black-headed Bunting (Hætteværling).

Rain clouds moving in.

After the standard time of five hours was over for the ringing, I went back to the station to get some very much needed rest (I could barely leave my eyes open at the ringing table after having had way too less sleep in the previous nights). Dylan and Olga also left soon after, but Alvin continued ringing by himself for almost three additional hours, during which he was virtually the only person out at Grenen. After closing the nets, he also walked around that area for some birding but didn’t see much. János and Dylan worked on reports for some of the rare birds we’ve had in the past days to submit them to the rarities committee. After that they went out again and observed a few Red-backed Shrikes (Rødrygget Tornskade). Before it began to rain towards the evening, I biked to Kabeltromlen again, equipped with a hedge cutter, to trim the reeds and grasses that have now grown beneath the mistiest and make the ringing site fresh again. After that we had our daily evening, and Olga prepared very delicious potato tortilla for dinner.

People: Alvin Johansson, János Schadl, Julian Helbig, Dylan Daunt, Olga Fernández Enríquez, Simon S. Christiansen, Kirsten