Today's weather was particularly windy with an average of 12 m/s and gusts of up to 18 m/s coming from the west, which of course made it too windy to open nets and do a ringing morning.

With such strong winds, the birds tend to stay sheltered in bushes and limit their movements as well as their communications with each other. I particularly hope the young fledglings who are experiencing their first big winds and big rain showers are staying dry and safe with their parents around! All of this makes for a rather quiet garden.

Tomorrow is the last standardized morning for the ringing season of spring 2026, but so far it looks like the weather won't allow me to open nets again because of strong winds. I apologize for sounding like a broken record with this weather commentary for the past days, it's been frustrating for sure! What is somewhat reassuring is that the number of birds, even on good weather days, had already lowered drastically anyways. This is normal for the end of the season!

I've had a good end of spring here nonetheless and managed to get a few new species that I had never ringed before, so that was amazing! 

I am also looking forward to a few days 'off' with some sleeping in late and other activities such as knitting or drawing, reading, etc. before my summer season starts again in July in Ottenby, Sweden. :D

This morning was unfortunately again interrupted by some strong winds and heavy rain showers coming and going. 

I managed to have the nets open for a few hours, but very few birds were moving because of the weather conditions. I quite miss the times where the weather forcasts were reliable, and where I could get a bit more birds in a morning! 

Whenever you get some birds, all the efforts feel worth it. 

For today, only a cute little Chiffchaff (Gransanger), and a recapture Lesser Whitethroat (Gærdesanger). Better than nothing...

I took the opportunity of this bad weather in the afternoon to do a good cleaning of the station, which was needed. 

So far, the weather looks like tomorrow I won't be able to open any nets because of very strong winds of 13m/s with gusts of 18m/s. 

I very much hope for monday the 15th to be okay weather as it is the last day of the standardized ringing for Spring, and I would love to be able to conduct a last normal morning!! 

We will see...

Ringing totals for today:

Gærdesanger (Lesser Whitethroat): 0/1

Gransanger (Chiffchaff): 1

Total: 1/1

The rain was once again around in the early morning, forcing me to open the nets with a few hours delay. I had the nets open for 4h from 8:00 in the morning until 12:00, and a mix of rather strong winds, clouds and a few drops of rain here and there brought me a few birds actually!

The ratio of new birds to recaptured birds is interesting today, because I caught more recaptures than unringed birds. All of them were birds previously ringed at the station as well, which makes them our resident birds.

Amongst them were some babies, which I was so happy to see again after a few days break where they stayed put in bushes because of the weather. I have caught the first 2 Chiffchaff (Gransanger) babies, which was ADORABLE!

Young Chiffchaff (Gransanger) fledgling caught today! Notice the 'baby mouth' with the yellow corners. Very cute!

Along with that I was surprised to catch 2 new Icterine Warblers (Gulbug). By now I feel like I am close to having ringed all the resident Icterines, so it’s always a surprise to get some new ones! But what a treat. Funny birds they are!

In the afternoon I went to the area I had found a Stock Dove nest last week, (I was supposed to go yesterday but didn’t end up going because I still felt ill). I was very happy to see that the 2 eggs that were in the nest 6 days ago, had both hatched and the babies have already grown quite a bit!

I would love to ring those babies when they are grown and big enough, but we are still working on getting permission from the land owner. I’m crossing my fingers!

On the way there I saw a beautiful Adder (Hugorm) who was crossing the road. Be safe little one!

Adder (Hugorm) seen on my way to the Stock dove nest checking

I also wanted to mention that yesterday evening, while I was on a short walk around the dunes close to the station, I found 2 gorgeous Grey Partridges (Agerhøne) foraging in the tall grasses. They were a lifer for me, and from what I understand not so common around here, so a nice find!

Grey Partridge (Agerhøne) seen in the dunes yesterday evening.

Excuse the mediocre quality of the picture, I took it with my phone through my binoculars ahahaha! We can still identify the bird, which is good enough for me at this point. Someday I dream of investing in a good camera…  

This morning after a quick rain shower which forced me to delay the opening of the nets by around 30min, I decided to open the station garden nets only as the rain showers still looked really menacing on the radar, and I wanted to keep quick control of the nets if it started to rain out of nowhere. 

The sunrise looked promising though, but some big clouds were sitting over the sea.

Beautiful sunrise over the station this morning

The morning was extraordinarly quiet, both bird wise and wind wise. In the whole 5h of the nets being open, I only caught one Chiffchaff (Gransanger). Then, on the closing round as it was raining, I caught three birds, two Greenfinches (Grønirisk) and recaptured one Icterine Warbler (Gulbug). Making the grand total for today, 4 birds. 

The two greenfinches I suspect to have been a pair, one was a female and the other a male, caught in the same net next to each other. They were both exhibiting signs of breeding (brood patch for the female, and cloacal protrusion for the male). That was really cute! I released them together, just in case.

Male Greenfinch (Grønirisk), with a little rain drop on his head

In other news, I might have caught a cold! :( Quite the crazy thing to happen in mid-june ahaha. I'm sure I'll feel better soon though :P

This afternoon, if I feel good enough for it, I will go check a Stock Dove nest that Amanda and I found about a week ago, to see how the eggs are doing, perhaps they have hatched now!

This morning, after checking the weather forcast and rain radar after waking up, I went out to open the nets as it seemed there was no rain planned and the wind was ok. 

After being all done with opening, I started making breakfast and within 3min of my return at the station, it started pouring rain.

I then had to rush back outside and close all the nets again, as there now was multiple rain clouds in a row coming on the radar, and the amount of rain pouring was very intense even if for sort of short periods of time. Luckily no birds had had the time to get caught and wet in this span of time.

I tried to wait it out, seeing if I could open the nets later as I was up and ready anyways, but it never looked good. It was periods of beautiful summer weather with blue sky and the next minute thunder and pouring rain. 

Around 8 Henrik arrived and with some big packages along! It was some new gardening equipment he recently purchased for the station, as the gardens have now grown to be very tall trees and big bushes. 

After a little while putting the equipment together, Henrik was excited to try some of them out, and we thought 'we can try it on a couple of rose bushes, just to see!'. 

Long story short, we erradicated MULTIPLE square meters of the invasive sand rose bushes, and the equipment performed even better than we thought. 

Henrik was cutting, I was raking and cleaning up the branches and leaves, we were really efficient! 

When we were done with that, Henrik took off with some cardboard to bring to the recycling station and I had some lunch and some rest. 

I hope to be able to open some nets tomorrow, it seems like there will be little to no wind, and so far no rain - but I am not sure I trust the weather app anymore after this morning's betrayal!

Today the weather was too bad for ringing, with some heavy rain showers and some strong winds. 

It turned out to be sort of a good timing though, because I didn't feel so well today, so I was happy to have a slow day to recover a little bit.

I did go on a relaxing walk in the dunes around the station in the afternoon though, and found some interesting things!

Beautiful area in the dunes, not far from the lighthouse.

For example, I found this poor little bumblebee stuck on a spike on a branch, which is the work of the local Red-Backed Shrikes stashing their catches. These birds hunt their small prey and are known to have this special behavior of placing their prey on vairous spikes and pointy things such as barbed wire or tree spikes. 

The bumblebee was dead and probably will be eaten very soon! 

An unlucky bumblebee caught and 'stashed' by a Red Backed Shrike 

I have also witnessed the first young fledglings out in the dunes, such as Linnets (Tornirisk) and White Wagtails (Hvid Vipstjert). The young linnets were begging for food from their parents, which was really cute to see.

I have also checked on a Barn Swallow (Landsvale) nest that I had noticed a few days ago, but it was empty at the time. Today however, eggs were present and the adults were around. So good! 

Tomorrow I will be ringing, the weather looks to be better even though the wind is still rather strong. Let's see what the day has to offer!

This morning the weather was a little bit windy from the south, and throughout the standard time a few drops of rain kept taunting me and making me wonder if it was going to rain a lot or not! In the end, the rain never picked up and I could have all the nets open for the whole time with no problem.

The proportion of newly ringed birds and recaptured local birds is a 50/50 today, with 5 recaptures and 5 new ringed birds.

Only one ‘baby’ was recaptured today, which makes me wonder if the weather was slightly too bad for the little ones learning to fly and explore, and that maybe they preferred to stay put and safe in a bush in the garden. It was a very sweet baby Dunnock (Jernspurv) that was ringed a couple of days ago.

A little highlight of today was a beautiful male Lesser Redpoll (Lille Gråsisken), which was quite vocal in the hand; so cute!

Beautiful male Lesser Redpoll (Lille Gråsisken)

At this time of year, the birds exhibit breeding signs such as brood patches, a defeathering of the chest and belly area to better transfer heat to the eggs while incubating, as well as cloacal protrusion on males which is a protrusion of the cloaca, to better deliver sperm to the females.

These two characteristics are making it possible to sex some species that would usually not be possible to distinguish based on plumage, like the Chiffchaffs (Gransanger) for example.

The presence of a clear cloacal protrusion is indicating of a male bird, and most of the time the presence of a brood patch would indicate that the bird is a female. As a note though, some species such as Whitethroats share the incubation of eggs between males and females, so both sexes can have brood patches, making it not useful for sexing.

It is useful to know the incubation strategies of the common species when ringing breeding birds, and I am so glad that I had the opportunity to learn about breeding bird ringing at the CES site in Vestamager, Copenhagen last year. There is extra care to be taken with breeding birds who are putting all their energy into their broods, incubation, feeding of young, nest building, etc, as well as juvenile birds who are still developing, need to stay in the area they are caught for their parents to not loose sight of them, to leave them in an environment they have already explored a little bit, etc.

I find this period to be a very different type of ringing compared to migration time ringing for example, and I really like it. The birds exhibit some special behaviors and it is so endearing to catch youngs and breeding parents! I have a very nice time caring for parents and babies, and adapting my ringing routines to have as little of an impact on their day as possible.

This morning Amanda joined me again for the ringing which was so nice! She unfortunately had to drive back home to Copenhagen after the ringing as she has work on Monday, but I enjoyed those two ringing sessions and two days with her so much! I miss you already my dear!

The weather looked a bit uncertain at certain points, even with a few drops of rain from time to time. It never went bad enough to warrant us to close the nets though, which was nice. Being two people instead of me alone when the weather is looking uncertain is less stressful because if it goes chaotic, we can close and manage the nets quicker!

The morning was relatively quiet as is usual for this end of season, but we still were happy to find a few special birds in our nets!

For example, early in the session we caught a Marsh warbler (Kærsanger) which is the first of the season for the station, as well as for me! Catching these ‘Acrocephalus’ warblers is always fun, they are a treat in the hand and interesting to study. We look at the wing and a few measurements to confirm the identification in between Reed warbler (Rørsanger), Marsh Warbler (Kærsanger), and the rare Blyth’s Reed Warbler (Buskrørsanger), as they can sometimes be a little hard to differentiate by the plumage and appearance alone when not used to these species. Our little cutie was definitely a Marsh warbler!

Marsh warbler (Kærsanger)

Later in the morning we caught a beautiful breeding female Greenfinch (Grønirisk), which was the first of the season for me, and a rather rare catch for both of us!

Female Greenfinch (Grønirisk), with a presence of a brood patch indicating she is breeding in the area.

Amanda also had the pleasure of getting a sweet Lesser Redpoll (Lille Gråsisken) recapture, which she really enjoyed as it is another species she rarely gets to catch.

Female Lesser Redpoll (Lille Gråsisken)

Otherwise, still an immense joy as usual to catch some young fledglings Tree Sparrow (Skovspurv), they are the cutest!

Thank you Amanda for two very nice days together, and see you sometimes soon again I hope!!

This morning Amanda and I set off to open the nets at 4:00, and after that had a good breakfast. The wind had gone down a lot since yesterday, and we were hoping for a day with a bit more birds than what I had yesterday morning.

Some of the first birds we caught in the early morning were little fledglings Tree Sparrow (Skovspurv). These first captures set off the theme of the day because we caught quite a few fledglings of different species today!

We had the pleasure of getting the first fledgling Song Thrush (Sangdrossel), which had the most adorable short tail and wings! That little cutie was old enough to be out of the nest, but still practicing their flying skills and most definitely still taken care of by their parents.

Freshly fledged Song Thrush (Sangdrossel), note the short wings and very short tail feathers!

We also had fledgling Dunnocks (Jernspurv), as well as the first two fledgling Chaffinches (Bogfink) which were siblings (female and male) so we could see the difference of coloration of both sexes in chaffinches at this age.

Young Dunnock (jernspurv)

Another highlight of the day, which was not a ‘baby bird’, was this female Blackcap (Munk) which we recaptured with a ring from Belgium! Getting foreign recaptures like this is always very thrilling, and fun to get some more life history from the bird when the reports come back from the original ringers.

Female Blackcap (Munk) with a ring from Belgium.

Belgian ring

This afternoon, Amanda and I will try to find the Woodchat Shrike (Rødhovedet Tornskade) which Alvin and I had found around a week ago, as it would be a new species for Amanda for Denmark! If we don’t find the shrike though, perhaps we can find another interesting bird in the area!