A trip to the beach

I was up early and out at Grenen by 9 (would have been quicker but I was birding on my way up there). Plenty of birds considering the time of year a large flock of 300 fieldfare contained two redwing, a flock of woodpigeon had a stock dove with them and there were plenty of corvids, magpies, hooded crows and 150+ jackdaws wheeling around the beach. The rough legged buzzard was still around, perched nicely on a fence post for me, if a little distant. The sea was pretty busy too, with 7 velvet scoters amongst almost 100 common, goldeneye, teal, mallard, eider. A few red throated divers flew past along with some guillemots. Some skylark were moving around, echoing what a friend of mine is finding further south, and eventually I picked up the four snow bunting on the beach, my first in Denmark. A great crested grebe on the sea was my first for Skagen, and I saw 33 species in total. I found a dead cormorant on the beach, and reflected that the name ‘great’ cormorant doesn’t really seem appropriate for a bird that seems so small in death.

After lunch I checked out the bikes, making sure the tyres were pumped up and preparing for my first trip into town to pick up some shopping. After this I spent a long time trying to find fieldfare calls for our MP3 player to hopefully catch some in the garden tomorrow morning. Trying to get a loud enough call was the issue, and whilst I have one, it’s not very loud. Hopefully it will work well with the apples on the ground though.

It’s been a long time since I got on a bike since last year, and this was possibly the worst word direction to cycle into town, as I barely moved without great effort. However it’s all good exercise and it was nice to familiarise myself with the town.

On return, I used a recipe taught to me by Michele, our Italian volunteer from last year and cooked myself pasta in a mushroom cream sauce (I’m not at all confident in the Italian to attempt to write the real name). It was good enough for a first try though. Tomorrow I intend to get up earlier than usual to try and get some thrushes in the mist nets, so unlike a lot of you on a Saturday evening, I went to bed early!

Snow bunting (snespurv) one of four on the beach northeast of the Lighthouse

’Great’ cormorant (skarv), doesn’t look so great when compared to the size of a human foot.