Black Redstart and Long-legged Buzzard

Today I had the pleasure of sleeping about thirty minutes longer than usual, since I have been lacking a lot of sleep the days before. I joined Alvin and Olga at Kabeltromlen from the second round on, whilst János was out counting at World’s End 3, and Dylan slept in to say goodbye to his family later, who took the plane back to Scotland today. For the ringing, the conditions were almost perfect, with overcast and almost no wind at least in the beginning, but still we didn’t catch as many birds, ten in total. One of them however was a species we haven’t caught yet this spring: An adult female Black Redstart (Husrødstjert). Dylan immediately came to see it after we called him, it was a new species for him to see in hand, since they are rather rare in Scotland.

Adult female Black Redstart (Husrødstjert).

Beautiful red tail feathers.

On his way to the observations, János flushed a Lapwing (Vibe) that was resting on the Sandormtracks. During the count, he also had a Mediterranean Gull (Sorthovedet Mage), five Caspian Gulls (Kaspisk Måge) and a Little Gull (Dværgmåge) resting on the beach. Among the many Fulmars (Mallemuk) out at sea today, he picked out two of the darker (“blue”) morph. Knud joined him a bit later. The biggest highlight came after the count though, when a Long-legged Buzzard (Ørnevåge) was called out approaching Grenen. Our observers had very nice views of the bird as it went straight overhead on a migration attempt and then turned south again. We at the ringing just were on closing round and for some reason didn’t receive the Zello messages. Because of that, we got the information a bit too late to see the Buzzard on its first attempt. But luckily for us, the Long-legged Buzzard (Ørnevåge) came up north again and this time we did manage to see it, just like Dylan who saw it from around the lighthouse. It was a lifer both for Dylan and for Alvin. Within the following hours, the buzzard was seen again and again many times.

Long-legged Buzzard (Ørnevåge)!

Back at the station, Alvin opened the net in the lighthouse garden mainly because we saw the Swallows (Landsvale & Bysvale) flying very low today. We didn’t get one of these unfortunately, but Alvin had a recaptured male Great Tit (Musvit) and realised that the female it’s breeding with in one of the nest boxes was ringed with the very next subsequent ring number on the same day some time ago. It seems like they have been sticking to each other for a while now :)
After some of the station work and much needed napping, we all went out to town to meet Simon at the ice cream shop. He lost a bet the other day when he promised us that there would come a rare raptor, and if there wouldn’t, he’d get us all an ice cream – so here we are, happy that the Long-legged Buzzard (Ørnevåge) turned up today and not before. So we got the ice cream and went to the harbour to enjoy it there. After that, we went to a nice little restaurant, where we had fries, and beer, and nice chats, while the rain pelted on the roof to make it even more cozy. In the end, Simon said goodbye to Olga and Dylan; he’ll go to Iceland with Lisa tomorrow morning to do some field work there, and won’t be here when the two of them leave. After having had so much food in the evening, we didn’t feel like any dinner was needed, so we just went to the supermarket to buy some stuff we need and then headed back to the station. We were all a bit surprised when we realised how late it was already. János spent the rest of the evening re-counting birds in pictures he took during his time in Georgia; he just sat in a chair for a long time clicking black dots on his computer screen. It was very tiring for him, but definitely with it, because the precise numbers were even higher than his previous estimate.

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