Migration picking up again

After some days with fewer birds today has been a good day for ringing again. Just from walking through the dunes you would never guess that so many little birds are stopping here for the day before they continue their migration towards the north at nightfall. The beauty of bird ringing is that you can detect all those birds that otherwise would go mostly unnoticed. This way we can also get a good feeling of how wind and weather affect birds on migration. Winds are turning south now so we expect more migrants to pass through the next few days, however it is possible that with the good winds they will go faster and not stop here at Skagen before crossing the sea.

Today we ringed mostly willow warblers (løvsanger). The other advantage of bird ringing over simple observation is that you can measure the birds which helps to sex them. Therefore we know that today we caught mostly female willow warblers which generally migrate later than the males. This indicates that willow warbler migration is already coming to an end, whereas the migration of Acrocephalus warblers only just begins.

It was impressive to see how these little birds must have arrived just after we opened the nets at 4 in the morning. The first net check was good but a lot of birds only arrived for the second net run. Many of these then were obviously very tired and after ringing often stayed on or right next to the ringing table before they flew off again. The long ways they travel every year appear even more impressive when you hold such an exhausting little bird in your hand and think of the fact that it has seen more countries than you ever have. And without an airplane.

For the rest the ringing was also interesting as we had a total of 14 species, among which also two bearded tits (skægmejse), a male and a female, which made our ringers and some visitors very happy. Setting up the new nets yesterday obviously was worth the effort. By now we have a nice mixture here of birds that are already breeding in the area where we have set up the nets and birds that just pass on migration.

Fanny did the migration counts this morning and managed to take this beautiful picture of a Merlin that came really close.

Ringed birds (at Kabeltrommlen):

Garden Warbler - Havesanger - 5

Lesser Whitethroat - Gærdesanger - 4

Dunnock - Jernspurv - 2

Pied Flycatcher - Broget Fluesnapper - 1

Common Redstart - Rødstjert - 3

Robin - Rødhals - 3

Wren - Gærdesmutte - 1

Willow Warbler - Løvsanger - 39

Bearded Tit - Skægmejse - 2

Reed Warbler - Rørsanger - 1

Icterine Warbler - Gulbug - 1

Blackcap - Munk - 1

Yellowhammer - Gulspurv - 1

Redwing - Vindrossel 1

Total: 66

Folk: Martina Hillbrand, Frederik R. Johansen, Fanny Rey, Esben E. Hansen og Kirsten

Todays observations in Dofbasen from observers in the area