100 new birds ringed!

Today was by far our best day of ringing so far in the season, with exactly one hundred new birds ringed today! We were hoping we would have a nice day after we weren't able to ring the day before but needles to say, this went above and beyond our expectations! 

The day started off relatively slow but very quickly we began catching up to over 20 birds in a single net run! Without a doubt the highlight of the first portion of the morning, a collared dove (Tykerdue) flew into the net and we were able to keep it in the pocket and extract it without much problem.  It may not have been anywhere close to a wood pigeon (ringdue) in terms of size but it was still a great suprise and Merit's first time ringing one! 

Besides everything else that was incredible about this bird, the red eye on this dove was so striking! 

One of the great parts about ringing that day was the number of true migrants we were getting.  Our most common captures were Willow Warbler(Løvsanger with over 30 ringed) and Pied Flycatcher (Brogget Fluesnapper with over 20 ringed) and while we have been getting Willows infrequently all season, the flycatcher was a much more uncommon capture prior to ringing today.  We also caught a few other nice suprises, including a Spotted Flycatcher (Grå Fluesnapper) and a (lifer) Wood Warbler (Skovsanger)! The Wood Warbler was a particularly nice suprise as we only catch a few every season.  

While we did catch less birds as the day went on, we were getting some very nice birds.  At one point Bent even noted that he had spotted Crossbills (Lille Korsnæb) by the nets though it seemed very unlikely we would catch them.  

We were also able to find some very nice herps while waiting for the next net runs, Bent was even able to find an Anguis fragilis while we were preparing for our next net run which was a nice suprise in between all the birds we were getting.  

Shockingly enough, the highlight of the day would not come until later when we were able to catch not one, but two Crossbills (Lille Korsnæb) in the pond net! They were both adult females with one of them even having evidence of a brood patch!  After we went past 100 new rings (at which point it was very late in the afternoon), we decided to close the nets for the day.  

It was rather faint but I felt like the crossbills had a strong smell reminescet of pine needles 

We'll be hosting some visitors for the next few days who are attending the advanced ringing course, hopefully our streak of catching some nice birds will cotinue with them! 

People at the station

Joseph Stephan, Louis K. Poulsen, Merit Lenk, Strummer Edwards, and visitors for the advanced ringing course