Today was a day without any wind, during my stay at Blåvand this happened very rarely. The weather started a bit cloudy, but it cleared out very nicely. Yesterday a short toed eagle has been found by a photographer who made a photo of it and put it out in the Danish facebook group. Unfortunately, he did not put out the location directly. Because of the lack of wind, a big group of common scoters was visible, unfortunately there were just to far to see if there is a black scoter among them. The ringing was better than the last days. Hopefully the coming days there will be more fledge to ring them. A highlight was a recapture of a male yellowhammer ringed as a 2k+ back in 2017, so it is a minimal of 9 years old.

Ringing

White wagtail 1/0

Dunnock 1/0

Stonechat 1/0

Song thrush 2/0

Lesser whitethroat 2/0

Common whitethroat 2/1

Chiffchaff 1/1

Coal tit 1/0

Great tit 1/0

Tree sparrow 1/0

Siskin 1/0

Lesser redpoll 1/0

Yellowhammer 0/1

Totals 15/3

People at the station: Bjørn, Bent and Menno

Today was quite slow again. The highlight was another treecreeper caught. Another funny thing was a mistle thrush calling a few times and flew off again, unfortunately I could not find it in the nets afterwards. The cuckoo was still able to stay out of the nets, this is a pity since it has been calling for over a month in the area.

Ringing:

Dunnock 1/0

Song thrush 1/0

Icterine warbler 0/1

Lesser whitethroat 4/1

Willow warbler 0/1

Crested tit 1/0

Treecreeper 1/0

Goldfinch 1/0

Redpoll 1/0

Totals: 10/3

The start of the day was very cold. Because of that, the first hours there were no birds in the nets. After some hours, there were finally some birds in the nets. The lack of birds allowed me to check the beach on some birds as well. Luckily I did not find any dead gannets.

Svend Aage kom forbi med brød og ordenssans. Han syntes det var på tide at vi fik ryddet op i redskabsrummet, så der nu er cleanet, når NKV påbegynder deres turistture og de kan komme ind til deres grej.

Ringing:

Lesser whitethroat 1/2

Chiffchaff 2/2

Crested tit 0/1

Tree sparrow 2/0

Bullfinch 0/1

Total 5/6

I øjeblikket driver rigtig mange døde Suler ind på strandene på den Jyske vestkyst. Fuglene er uden tvivl ramt af fugleinfluenza, viser Engelske undersøgelser.
I lørdags fandt jeg 7 døde på den sydligste del af Skallingen og i går ikke mindre end 20 på en 3 km lang strækning ved Vejers. Alle undtagen en var adulte fugle, hvilket tyder på at det er i kolonierne fuglene smittes, hvor deres reder ligger med kun 1 meters mellemrum. Verdens største koloni Bass Rock i Skotland, som huser 75.000 par er hårdt ramt, og i UK dør i 1000vis i øjeblikket. Det er uden tvivl fugle herfra som driver ind på vestkysten.
I Blåvandområdet har vi på få dage fundet i alt 35 døde Suler
Ikke kun Sulerne er ramt. I Holland er 25% af bestanden af Splitterne døde inden for kort tid. Og denne art er også ramt i Danmark, hvor der i kolonien på Sprogø er fundet 100 døde.

https://www.dof.dk/om-dof/nyheder?nyhed_id=2074

https://www.shetnews.co.uk/2022/05/31/thousands-of-birds-dying-as-avian-flu-runs-riot-among-seabird-colonies/

https://www.nhnieuws.nl/nieuws/304771/een-groot-raadsel-meer-dan-400-dode-zeevogels-op-texel

Today, the first hours were raining so the opening was at 08:00. Because of the wind it was also not possible to open all the nets. Although not all the nets could be opened, we caught a willow tit. It was very nice and luckily Bent could enjoy it as well. Besides the willow tit, the ringing was very slow.

Ringing:

Dunnock 2/0

Chiffchaff 0/1

Willow tit 1/0

Coal tit 0/1

Chaffinch 0/1

Bullfinch 1/0

Totals: 4/3

Photo of the catch of the day, Willow tit

People at the station: Bent, Bjørn and Menno

Today the day started with some rain, so I was able to sleep a bit longer than usual. After the rain stopped, I opened up at 9. The first round was a very promising round with 8 birds. Unfortunately, that was almost all there was for today.

Ringing totals:

Dunnock 2/0

Blackbird 0/1

Song thrush 1/1

Icterine warbler 0/1

Lesser whitethroat 2/2

Chiffchaff 1/3

Treecreeper 1/0

Total: 7/8

People at the station: Menno

Today it has been one of the more quiet days since the start of this month. Because of this Sven, Bjorn and me were able to dig out the tern fence. During the process we saw a Hummingbird hawk sitting on the searocket.

The pictures of us working will follow later

Ringing totals: 8/6

Dunnock 2/0

Lesser whitethroat 1/0

Common whitethroat 0/1

Chiffchaff 0/2

Willow warbler 1/0

Crested tit 0/2

Great tit 0/1

Bullfinch 3/0

People at the station: Sven, Bjørn and Menno

Today was a slow day, despite the southern winds. I hoped for some more birds with the southern winds but the birds did not cooperate. The best birds were nuthatch and tree creeper, it is nice to catch them!

In the afternoon, there was a long period of rain. This made me close the nets earlier than I would like.

Ringing totals

Dunnock 1/0

Stonechat 1/0

Lesser whitethroat 0/1

Chiffchaff 1/2

Willow warbler 1/1

Crested tit 3/0

Blue tit 1/0

Great tit 1/1

Nuthatch 1/0

Tree creeper 1/0

Chaffinch 1/0

Greenfinch 1/0

Linnet 1/0

Bullfinch 1/0

Yellowhammer 1/0

Totals 16/5

People at the station: Bent and Menno

Nuthatch 

Treecreeper

Today it was a bit slower then yesterday. But with some nice numbers of juvenile tree sparrows it was quite entertaining. Around the Fuglestation tree sparrows are the dominant species, but in Blåvand there is one breeding spot with house sparrows. Today I was lucky enough to catch a house sparrow, probably a young out of that breeding colony. The difference in size was quite obvious.

It turns out to be a good breeding year for crested tits in the nearby woods, since we still catch some new juveniles. These birds are exploring the surroundings, also caught post juvenile dispersal. Once they found a spot where it is suitable to breed, they will settle down there and are very likely to stay there until they die.

Today I got some company of Bent, Sven and Joakim. We had 2 crested tits during our communal round. Because Joakim lives in the east of denmark he really liked those. Afterwards they went for a look at the little tern colony and found a dead gannet on the beach. Because of the current Avian Flu outbreak, we collected it. At some places the Avian Flu is really hitting the bird population. In the Netherlands for example 25% of the breeding population of sandwich terns died. In total 5000 birds were collected on a total of 20000 breeding birds.

Ringing totals:

Dunnock 2/0

Song thrush 2/0

Lesser whitethroat 0/1

Common whitethroat 1/0

Blackcap 1/0

Crested tit 5/0

Coal tit 1/0

House sparrow 1/0

Tree sparrow 6/0

Linnet 1/2

Redpoll 1/0

Total 21/3

Bird of the day, House sparrow. 

Today it was possible to open all the nets again for the whole day. After two days with only limited opened nets, it was really nice to open everything again. It started really nice with a juvenile robin. After many adult/2k birds, this was only the first time we caught a juvenile. Because robins are quite agrassive, the juveniles must have no red breast because the males would attack them otherwise. Besides the juvenile robin, two juvenile common whitethroats flew in the nets. The crested tit had a good breeding season in the nearby woods, because we catch plenty of them. Despite their cuteness, they can be quite annoying jhnwith their picking and talent of grabbing a lot of net firmly. Speaking about tits, I caught the second marsh tit in the history of the station. Next to that, we caught a tree pipit. This was the first for the season, normally they are caught earlier.

With 38 birds in total, it was quite nice to be busy during the morning.

Ringing totals:

House martin 1/0

Tree pipit 1/0

Dunnock 1/0

Robin 1/0

Song thrush 0/2

Icterine warbler 0/1

Lesser whitethroat 2/1

Common whitethroat 3/3

Willow warbler 1/0

Firecrest 1/0

Marsh tit 1/0

Crested tit 4/2

Great tit 0/4

Coal tit 1/0

Tree sparrow 2/0

Chaffinch 2/0

Goldfinch 1/0

Siskin 2/0

Linnet 0/1

 Firecrest

 Marsh tit

 House martin

 Goldfinch

 Tree pipit