Rain or Shine, its Skua-time

This morning it was quite windy from WSW. So we were expecting some seabirds today. Due to the harsh conditions, the ringers left the nets closed and joined the morning observation.

As we couldn't go to the Sabine bunker due to the military exercises, we observed from the Böhmers hole.

Like the days before, the Red throated divers and scoters started to move in pretty good numbers right from the start, so that we ended up with 420 individuals of the red throated divers and around 980 common scoters. As hoped, the first Arctic skuas soon passed by. Some of them passed very close to the shore or started hunting more or less right in front of us! All in all, there were 20 in the end, which was a really great experience for me as a guy from Switzerland, where only small numbers of skuas turn up every year!

Arctic Skua / Photo: Louis Poulsen

Even though no rare seabirds appeared, it was always something to look at. There were also common and black-headed gulls in pretty good numbers. As it was a bit busy over the sea all morning, we stayed at the observation post beyond the standard time until it started to die down around midday.

People at the station: Hannah, Michael, Louis, David, Laerke, Lorin