Garden is the new Kabeltromlen

This morning started very grey and got progressively more grey. Our new interns, Saxe and Gustav joined Mio and I at the count, while Louis, Sarah and Christina headed to Kabeltromlen. There was some early excitement with a sighting of a small group of little auk (søkonge), but they disappeared fairly quickly into the sea fog. Compared to yesterday’s influx, the numbers today were low, and especially towards the end of the count, it appeared that birds have given up migrating.

In the ringing team, the morning started even slower but eventually some bullfinches (dompap), a blackcap (munk) and a wren (gærdesmutte) showed up. When ringing is slow, it just gives more time to appreciate each bird!

We returned to the station for lunch and data entry, and opened the garden nets, hoping they might be more fruitful than Kabeltromlen. Sarah went for a quick swim to gear herself up for work, and returned with a dead razorbill (alk), which had washed up. A visitor on top of the lighthouse probably experienced an odd sighting of her sprinting out the stormy sea holding a dead bird.  

Early on, we caught a robin (rødhals), and then half an hour later we caught the same robin – he/she was perhaps not the smartest. A little later, I checked the nets and found the highlight of the day – an arctic redpoll (hvidsisken)! We recently had an education in differentiating between the redpoll taxa, and today we were put to the test. Take a look at the photo below and see if you can figure out which is the arctic, and which is the mealy redpoll (stor gråsisken).

Photo: an arctic redpoll alongside a mealy redpoll – but which is which?

If you said the bird on the left, you are correct – this is a tough one as the redpoll on the right might also be mistaken for an arctic, but the paler plumage, shorter beak and lack of streaking on the flank are more obvious on the left bird. From another angle, it is more clear – look at that white rump!

Photo: an arctic redpoll from above.

We caught in total eight birds in the garden net, five of which were redpolls, so we had plenty of opportunities to practice our identification. These nets are often just as successful as those at Kabeltromlen, sometimes even more!

Christina kindly went shopping and Mio cooked us a delicious vegetarian Bolognese to fuel us for night catching, which unfortunately didn’t go so well. We expected good conditions, given the new moon wouldn’t illuminate the fields too much. Sadly, the haze from earlier in the day persisted and diffracted the light from the town and the lighthouse, so conditions were closer to a full moon’s light! No woodcock (skovsneppe) let us get close, but we did creep up on a nice hedgehog (pindsvin) after mistaking it for a bird in the thermal lens.

Photo: a hedgehog (pindsvin).

We had also opened the nets for Tengmalm’s owl (perleugle), but the wind picked up and it started to rain, so we had to admit defeat again. One of these days, we will start the blog with a photo of an owl!

Highlights from the observations:

Søkonge  4

Silkehale  10

Kaspisk Måge  1

Ringing (Kabeltromen):

Munk  1

Gærdesmutte  1                   

Dompap  4

Total: 6

Ringing (Garden):

Hvidsisken  1

Stor gråsisken  4

Gærdesmutte 1

Rødhals 1

Total: 7

Nordstjernevej (Michael Ancher)

Træløber 1

Skovspurv 6

Rødhals 1

Gulspurv 2

Total: 10

Jenne sø (Michael Ancher)

St gråsisken 89

Lille gråsisken 69

Hvidsisken  3

Blåmejse 1

Total: 162

Link to today’s observations in the Dofbasen from observers in the area.

People: Mio Brix, Simon Sigaard Christiansen, Sarah Partridge, Louis-Marie Gourmelon, Christina Liu, Rosie Berkin, Saxe Lind Christiansen, Gustav Juel og Michael Ancher.