A good day with a Marsh Tit

The ringing:

After I had opened the nets, Henrik came to the station to bird in the area with David and another car arrived just before I went for the first round: Xenia came to the station today to join the ringing. She had chosen a good day, especially the first two rounds were good with birds. We had a lot of Dunnocks “Jernspurv” today, but later, the morning brought some surprises, that all Xenia took out of the nets. While I had a zero round in the stations garden, she took a suspicious Tit of the net. Marsh Tit “Sumpmejse” and Willow Tit “Fyrremejse” have a very similar appearance. Now in spring, the easiest to identify them in the field is listening to their songs, which are very different, but also the call is different. But there are some other characteristics that you can use for identification. The Marsh Tit “Sumpmejse” has a whitish edge on the upper mandible of the bill, while the Willow Tit “Fyrremejse” has a completely black bill. In the Marsh Tit “Sumpmejse”, the head is shiny black while it is not really shining in the Willow Tit “Fyrremejse”.  Also the bib is usually quite small in the Marsh Tit “Sumpmejse” while is larger in the Willow Tit “Fyrremejse”. In hand, you can look at the tail. In the Willow Tit “Fyrremejse”, P6 is clearly shorter than P5. After some investigation, we came to the conclusion, it is a Marsh Tit ”Sumpmejse”. At the CES in my hometown we have both species, but the Willow Tit “Fyrremejse” is a bit more uncommon. Later, David told us, that at Blåvand, the Marsh Tit “Sumpmejse” is rare, so it was a good catch.

Marsh Tit/ Sumpmejse, pictures of Xenia Maria Salomonsen

A little later, Xenia also had two Goldfinches “Stillits” in the bags, also a nice species which we do not catch often here.

Goldfinch "Stillits", picture of Xenia Maria Salomonsen

In total, we had 25 new birds today, a good number for the first half of March.

 The moths:

The weather was nice the last days, the ringing good for March, but nevertheless, there was something missing to make my luck complete: The moths traps were empty.

Until yesterday evening, when I found  three different species in the traps, of which two were new for me and one must remain a slash species. This morning, there was just one, but a new one for me, so it is finally worth again to make a list.

Xylocampa areola/ Gedeblad-ugle

Acleris hastiana/ Foranderlig vikler

Later in the afternoon, Joseph and his girlfriend Frieda, who will stay with us for one week, came back to the station.

At the station: David Manstrup, Henrik Böhmer, Xenia Maria Salomonsen, Hanelie Sidhu, Joseph Stephan and Frieda