God dag for ringmærkerne

Vejr: klart og tørt med en svag nordøstlig vind. Temp. mellem 7 og 13 grader. God sigt.

Der er ikke meget spændende at sige om dagens obs som ligner de forrige dages til forveksling, så jeg vil ikke bruge alt for mange kræfter på det.

Der trak en søkonge lige før obsen begyndte, og der rastede en ud for Hukket i løbet af morgenen; der trak så godt som ingen lomvier/alke. En brushane blev set trække, og et par bjerglærker fløj omkring på stranden samt en snespurv.

Nogle stære trak ud, og der var mange alliker på trækforsøg, over 700 med én flok på ca. 550 højt på himlen der hele tiden trak ind og ud.

Lidt over middag steg jeg op på cyklen og cyklede til Grønningen for at storpiber. På Grønningen mødte jeg bl.a. Kim Duus som også var på vej ud for at se storpiber. Vi traskede ud på engene og krydsede en del hegn før vi nåede ud hvor den sidst var blevet set.

Den blev fundet ret hurtigt ved at blive trådt op et par gange hvor den blev set rimeligt; den fløj med en engpiber så bl.a. størrelsen kunne sammenlignes. Den kaldte dog kun én gang, og jeg fik nok ikke den bedste optagelse af den. Pludselig forsvandt den, og den blev vist ikke genfundet siden.

Jeg blev lidt på Grønningen, og der gik ikke lang tid før nogle fra DOF-ung som var kommet for at finde storpiberen, meldte at de havde en græshoppesangerart som muligvis kunne være en Pallas' græshoppesanger. Det lød jo spændende, og vi var heldigvis kun 500 meter derfra, så det skulle naturligvis tjekkes ud.

Mange folk kom til, vel op mod 75, og vi dannede en ring omkring krattet hvor den sidst blev set lande og gik derefter imod det for at skræmme den op. Efter at have gjort dette nogle gange, var fuglen nu blevet set så godt at den kunne bestemmes til en almindelig græshoppesanger!

Her til aften er Jimmy Skat ankommet og skal bliver her til mandag. Rose er taget til København i weekenden.

Folk: Bent, Jimmy, Andreas, Rose, David, Lars Tom, Jimmy, Henrik Böhmer, Anders Wiig, Ib Jensen, Daniel, Luke, Michael m.fl.

We had a good ringing day today with many birds, including several special ones.

It started off with Daniel getting a Woodcock from the net during the first round in the station garden, which he was pleased with after having flushed one away from the net yesterday! This was a new bird for the season, and the first time Daniel and I have seen them in the hand. They’re a really stunning bird and the biggest we’ve handled here. We let people know we had caught it and many people came to see it. These migrant Woodcock breed in Sweden, Finland and the Baltic Countries and head South-west to winter, often in France and the UK.

Woodcock. Photo: Luke Nelson

After the show, Rose joined me to release the Woodcock in some woody undergrowth at the bottom of the lighthouse garden away from the nets. It walked away and was soon hidden, demonstrating their excellent camouflage. There were quite a few birds in the nets which I started extracting. At one point whilst I was busy with a bird, Rose saw a big bird fly into the net behind me, so I sent her to hold the net around it until I could get there, only afterwards thinking I could be sending her to a painful encounter with a Jay or Sparrowhawk. No need to fear though as it proved to be another Woodcock! Perfect I thought, as it meant Daniel got one to ring too, which he was happy about. As we went down to the nets to release the second Woodcock, there was another in the net! So we returned to Bent and Rose at the lab who look confused as to why we still had the bird, a funny surprise to have another one. Three Woodcocks in a morning was a good result!

Today a radio programme was recording a programme about the station and bird migration, mostly following Bent around. After the Woodcock was shown, some DOF youth members asked Bent if they could see the Heligoland trap, as it is the only one in Denmark. So Bent took the DOF youth on a tour of the nets and the trap, and then to the lab where we were ringing to show how it works and explain why we do it. They were excited to see ringing in action, and perhaps Bent has inspired some future ringers who may one day return to Blåvand!

Another interesting bird was a Common Treecreeper which I took out of the net, and thought would be a good exercise for Daniel to identify which species it was, as he hadn’t ringed one before. He did so correctly, and we noticed it was a lot paler than we expected, so we realised it was the familiaris subspecies from Fennoscandia. Bent confirmed this, saying Blavand usually gets a few each year, migrants from Fennoscandia.

Familiaris subspecies of Treecreeper. Photo: Luke Nelson

We got quite busy as the day went on, catching many Goldcrests and a few Tits. After so many Goldcrests we were rewarded when Bent came with some birds from the nets telling us we had a Firecrest! Another first for the season, and another new bird for both Daniel and I to see in the hand. We were starting to fear we might not catch one this season, as usually September usually yields one or two. It’s a really striking bird, particularly amongst the Goldcrest. We didn’t announce it to people as we were busy with other birds, so didn’t have the time to show it. As it was a cold morning, it was important to minimise the time small birds were in the nets or waiting to be processed, so efficiency was key today.

Firecrest. Photo: Luke Nelson