About a Great (Snipe) Night

Like the title reveals, this day started at midnight, quite far away from our lovely Skagen area, in Volsted, where we were very happy that we had already caught three great snipes before midnight! Wow! This excitement is summarized in a poem that Jule wrote:

An ode to Trædækker

A Tradækker is a snipe
But not of normal kind
Because it's really great.
To catch, you have to come out late
With the bright moon above.
You can't help but feel love.
Its brown the most magnificent in town.
Its barred belly covering up yellow fat,
Making it feel round in your hand,
Like a handball
But prettier.
With a ring on its leg,
It flies out into the night.
Save travels and goodbye!

Great Snipe (Tredækker). Photo: Simon Kiesé

This blog should also be used to give our readers some interesting information about birds and to show you a small part of what we learn every day up here.

Ageing of Great Snipes (Tredækker) :

Young (1K) Great Snipe (Tredækker) tail: notice the obvious barring on the outermost tail feathers...  Photo: Simon Kiesé

...and compare it here with an adult (2K+) bird. Look how clean and white the outer tail feathers are on this bird!  Photo: Simon Kiesé

And as you might already know, a night-catching session at Skagen Fuglestation never ends early, so we went to another field, and there we also succeeded very well! Our station head, Simon S. Christiansen (SSC), had built a new, big and long hand net a few weeks ago, inspired by the hand net of the skilled night catcher Johan Funder.

The moment of catching a Quail (Vagtel). Video taken with thermal monocular.

With this hand net, SSC and Páll caught a Corn Bunting (Bomlærke) and two Quails (Vagtel). You could really see how amazed they were! And, of course, they had every reason to be. Just look how pretty the Quails are:

Quail (Vagtel), young male. Photo: Simon Kiesé

2cy.+ Corn Bunting (2k Bomlærke). Photo: Simon Kiesé

After a loooong trip back to the beautiful lighthouse, Simon Jr. and Pauline immediately went to Kabeltrommlen and opened the nets, while Knud (our local legend) took care of today's migration count at World's End 3. What he saw, you will find in the link to DOFbasen below...

Today, there weren't many birds in the nets. Maybe they were on a night tour as well and had all fallen asleep now?! However, after a few rounds, I joined them and helped close the nets, so that we could all go to our well-deserved sleep.

Sleep! Yes, there are no more words needed to describe what happened in the afternoon...

But with time, we all woke up, and we could already smell the cinnamon rolls that Pauline had baked for her delicious dinner earlier! What a lovely way to wake up!

And now, we can already see that the sky is getting dark again. Somehow, there is once again the smell of our next night-catching tour in the air. Tonight, we will see if we can catch more waders at the Cormorant Lake (Skarvsøen).

We will let you know in the next blog post how it went!

Ringing (Kabeltromlen):

Reed Bunting (Rørspurv)	2
Chiffchaff (Gransanger)	2
Common Whitethroat (Tornsanger)	1
Blackcap (Munk)	1
Common Redstart (Rødstjert)	1
Willow Warbler (Løvsanger)	4
Reed Warbler (Rørsanger)	1

   Total: 12