New record for the season

Even though there was a strong wind today, we hit a new record of 49 ringed birds. Morten and I were hoping to hit the 50 mark, but this gives us something to look forward to in the future. It looks like tomorrow we might have some mild weather conditions, so maybe we hit the 50 real soon. Slowly more and more birds are coming our way and there have been some species lurking around that will end up in the nets one of these days. The one I have been excited about in particular are a male and female stonechat that have been foraging not to far from the station garden. I have heard their typical stone tapping sound in the dunes in the Netherlands many times, but never seen them up close.

Of the 5 recaptures today, there were two special guests. A Dunnock with a ring from Helgoland, Germany and the other was a Blackbird with a ring from London, England. The corresponding institutes have been notified and we will be waiting for an answer to get to know a bit more about these two.

Today we also had our first real success with the claptrap Morten has been setting up in front of the station. We had caught two robins with these traps in the past days, but they managed to escape before ringing them. A blackbird was caught in one of the claptraps today and we managed to get it out without escaping. Now we have our eyes set on the wagtails that have been showing up around the station. They should be a perfect condidate for this type of trap since they like foraging in open spaces. Maybe we get one of them one of these days.

David did some observing this morning and noted a good variation of ducks and waders, all flying south against the wind. The species that stood out in numbers were the teals with 1005 counted and 1013 wigeons.

Tonight part of the Blåvand group had another meeting about the plans for the station the upcoming year. A lot more goes into running a bird station than just ringing and observing birds.

People at the station: Blåvand group, Morten and Maxim.