Ringing

Today our wish came true! A beautiful (and big) Wood Pigeon (Ringdue) was found in the nets, and Alvin could have the full pigeon experience as we both had hoped.

Alvin and his first Wood Pigeon (Ringdue)!

A very nice exercise on steel ring closing, handling and measuring of a strong and bigger bird, and discovering a new species up close. Alvin is an experienced ringer, but Wood Pigeons are a rarity in the nets in most places, except here! Blåvand has a sort of magic and is known to be the Wood Pigeon catching place, and it did not disappoint.

I myself have had the chance of catching and ringing 4 Wood Pigeons since my arrival in early May! They were also a new species for me and it was a very exciting experience.

Close up of the Wood Pigeon

Other than this nice catch, the rest of the morning was rather slow with the usual visitors, some breeding and resident birds.

Observations

Ringing:

This morning we had really nice weather, but unfortunately a sunny and calm day is not ideal for ringing in bigger numbers.

The total for today was only 10 birds, which gave us the opportunity to study each bird caught for a while. It was nice to refresh each other’s memories and discuss some trickier to age birds.

Lesser Redpoll (Lille Gråsisken)

We also heard and saw in the early morning a Corn Bunting (Bomlærke) singing around the station. That would be fantastic to catch!

Ringing:

Xenia and I started the day together and were hopeful for some birds, as yesterday turned out to be a pretty decent ringing session, but unfortunately this turned out to be my slowest ringing morning since I arrived here in Blåvand. We only caught 5 birds in total during the 5 hours of the standard ringing period, but the first one was particularly special! 

A first for the season and a first for me to ring, a gorgeous male Barn Swallow (Landsvale) was found in the nets on the first round! 

Male Barn Swallow 

These birds have very short and small legs, with grippy feet and claws as their main lifestyle is being in the air, only coming down to nest and care for their young. They are not very agile on land, due to their proportionally very small legs and long wings and tail. That made the handling interesting and very different from other passerine birds, as we use the legs to secure birds in safe positions while handling a lot.

Their tail with the streamer outer feathers are particularly beautiful, and the body plumage is a fantastic metallic blue color. What a treat!!

Barn Swallow tail

Barn Swallow wing

The rest of the morning was super slow but we still had a couple of Icterine Warblers (Gulbug), which as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs are always a delight to have around.

Another cute visitor around the nets was this Slow Worm (Anguis fragilis) (Stålorm), very beautiful up close.

Slow Worm 

This evening my dear boyfriend Alvin is coming to the station from Skagen Fuglestation for around a week’s time and will be ringing with me for the duration of his stay. I am looking forward to it! One of his wishes is to catch a Wood Pigeon (Ringdue), which I really hope will happen! We are at the best location for it to happen after all :)

Ringing:

Today Xenia was with me for the ringing session, and the weather looked promising with some cloud coverage and a little bit of a breeze.

Our rounds were never very full, but with some longer ringing time than the standard time we managed to reach 32 birds in total, recaptures included.

The highlight of today was the relatively high number ( for the season and location ) of Icterine Warblers (Guldbug).

They are delightful birds to handle, they have a real little feisty personality and a very loud and funny voice! Moreover, they are beautiful birds with some yellow / green colors, and a nice medium size which feels really cozy in the hand compared to some of the smaller species such as Chiffchaffs (gransanger) for example.

Icterine Warbler (Gulbug)

Icterine Warbler up close, showcasing their little whiskers.

Tomorrow Xenia comes back to ring with me again, and I hope we’ll have other nice surprises!

 Little tern project:

Today marked the final observation for the Little Tern project. Once again, three little terns were flying around , but they didn’t land in the fence. It’s a shame that this year, despite a promising start, few little terns attempted to breed here. Apparently, this spot wasn’t good enough for the Little Terns this year. Fortunately, the fences on Rømø and Fanø have been more successful. Hopefully next year will be better!

People at the station: Alix Bortolussi, Jorn de Jong, Xenia 

Ringing:

The weather let me open the nets this morning and I was expecting quite a few birds after the rainy days, but the ringing session turned out quite slow. A few nice species still, and luckily some birds to show our guests who were here from 09:00!

Female Yellowhammer (Gulspurv)

The majority of the birds were Chiffchaffs (Gransanger) with a total of 7 caught, 4 new birds and 3 recaptures.

Chiffchaff (Gransanger)

Ringing:

Today the weather was rainy again so no ringing was carried out. Tomorrow looks better!

Little Tern project:

 There were no observation because of military training.

People at the station: Alix Bortolussi, Jorn de Jong, Rune, David Mastrup

Ringing:

Today I had the pleasure of ringing with Bent, who came to help me out with the number of birds increasing a little bit in the past couple of days. We had to open nets later than standard time as it was raining in the morning, but our ringing session still yielded a very good amount of birds, 37 in total! The best day for me since I arrived, and the fact we were two made it a lot more relaxed and calm than if I had been alone. Thank you Bent!

A highlight for today is the first Spotted Flycatcher (Grå Fluesnapper) of the season!

First Spotted Flycatcher (Grå Fluesnapper) of the season!

I have been catching more and more birds showing extensive brood patches, which is really sweet to see. The season is in full bloom, for birds and plants!

Tomorrow looks to be rainy unfortunately, so I will see how to deal with the ringing, if I can open nets at all. After two more intense days I wouldn’t mind a morning of sleeping in ahaha :)

Little tern project:

Today was another slow day for the Little Tern project. During today’s observation, four little terns were spotted, none of which landed in the fence. In addition, three to five common ringed plovers were seen in the fence, though they did not exhibit any nesting or scraping behavior.

At the station: Alix Bortolussi, Bent Jakobsen & Jorn de Jong

Ringing:

Today’s ringing session was unfortunately cut short because of sudden rain around 08:30. However, the birds did not disappoint in quantity and diversity! This day felt busy for me as I was alone, and worried about the unstable weather the whole morning. Some special birds showed up, like the first Red-Backed Shrike (Rødrygget Tornskade) of the season! A beautiful female.

Female Red-Backed Shrike 

I also had the pleasure of catching another Sedge Warbler (Sivsanger), which are pretty uncommon here.  For some reason, the Sedge Warblers I’ve caught and taken pictures of always insist on looking at the camera straight ahead, giving them a little bit of a goofy and clueless look. So cute!

Cute little forward facing Sedge Warbler

And last but not least, a visitor who is always so sweet to get in the hand, a talkative Icterine Warbler (Gulbug).

A yellow and talkative Icterine Warbler

After this short but intense session where I had to close nets in a hurry and even with some help from Jorn, I was so tired that I could not do much more for the rest of the day. Still, a good time with healthy birds, which made me feel like my efforts to take great care of the birds considering the weather were worth it.

Ringing is hard work, but oh so worth it!

Little tern project:

Today there was another observation for the Little Tern project. It was a relatively warm morning with heavy cloud cover. The observation was pretty quiet.In total I saw four little terns flying, but they didn’t land in the fence. There were, however, three common ringed plovers active in the fence for about 20 minutes before they too flew off. The Most exciting thing this morning was a big flock of around 15 Barn swallows flying over the fence which was nice to see.

Later that afternoon, Alix and I went to the beach to retrieve the 15 artificial tern nests and the trail cameras. Of the 15 nests we had set out, we found 13, one of which had not yet been predated. When we returned to the station, we checked to see if the trail cameras had captured any footage of the predators. Only one of the three cameras had some footage. It showed a fox and a crow eating the eggs at the same nest. Below is one of the photos the camera took.

A fox running away after eating the Quail eggs.

At the station: Alix Bortolussi & Jorn de Jong

Observations:

Vejr: VSV (240grd)/6,7 ms/8,5 grd/3:8/15 km sigt.

Det gik godt i dag. Jeg var godt underholdt de første 2 timer af morgenobsen, og dette grundet især ternetrækket. Lige fra morgenstunden var der godt gang i Hav og fjordterner som piskede forbi i pæne flokke. Den største flok var på 115 i et langt bånd. Det var alletiders! På 2 timer passerede lige omkring 1300 Hav/fjordterner, hvilket er den største dag for arten i år. 
Med terner følger kjover, og dem blev jeg heller ikke snydt for, idet 5 Almindelige kjover også lagde vejen forbi hukket. Altid dejligt med kjover i både lys og mørk form. Derudover sås 53 suler og 53 Rødlommer. 
Efter de 2 første timer døde det meget ud og den sidste time var stille. 

Ringing:

The weather for today looked a bit more promising than the past few days so Xenia and I had our hopes up for a nice morning of ringing. The first few rounds were pretty good with some highlights such as a recapture Yellowhammer (Gulspurv) and a Linnet (Tornirisk).

Beautiful male Yellowhammer (Gulspurv)

Male Linnet, very cute!

I also saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker hanging around the nets in a foresty area and kept hoping it would come in, but unfortunately not. Maybe another day!

At the closing round we spotted a cute little female Roe Deer feeding on the grass around some nets. Very cute encounter, and we could see that she knew the placement of the nets as she just gracefully slid under it to leave.

Roe deer feeding around the nets this morning

Little tern project:

 There were nog observations for the Little tern project due to the army training.

People at the station: Jorn de Jong, Alix Bortolussi, David Manstrup, Xenia 

Observations:

Vejret kl. 05.00: VSV (260grd) /10ms/8grd/8:8/5 km sigt – cirka 1 mm regn.
Det er et råkoldt forår, hvor temperaturen ligger på 8 grader i midt maj. Kunne vi evt få lidt mere varme, pleeeas?

Det var i dag hjemrejsedag for vores observatør Clara, så jeg fik lov at passe morgenobsen. Her skal lyde en stor tak for Claras indsats med observationerne dette forår.

Morgenen begyndte med regn den første halve time. Tællingen startede derfor først kl. 05.35, i stedet for klokken 5.00. Det blev en stille morgen på sydhukket, måske pga regn i resten af sydjylland. Derudover er havtrækket herude ved at gå på hæld, da vi har passeret datoen 15/5. Havtrækket daler kraftigt fra midt maj og frem. Jeg kunne nyde synet af 2 mørkfase nordtrækkende Almindelige kjover tæt på kysten, og 120 nordtrækkende Hav/fjordterner som kom i spredte småflokke, men ellers intet nævneværdigt.

I morgen skulle regnen være mindre, så måske har jeg bedre held i morgen, hvor jeg også er på pletten.    

(DMa)

Ringing:

Today the weather was too bad for me to open the nets at the standard time in the morning once again, so I decided to open the garden nets for a few hours for fun in the afternoon when the rain stopped and before the wind picked up even more. These hours were not the most successful but I still managed to ring two new birds and recapture two already ringed birds. Not completely vain efforts!

Tomorrow, Xenia comes back to help me ring in the morning and the weather looks like it’ll be nicer, so I am hopeful for some good birds after a few days of unvoluntary break!

Little Tern Project:

 There were no observations for the Little tern project due to the bad weather and the army training.

People at the station: Jorn de Jong, Alix Bortolussi, David Manstrup.