A Starling – our star of the day

A beautiful sunrise over the bog today. Picture: Hanelie Sidhu

Morning observations:

Today was a very nice morning at the observation. I did saw quite of lot of Sandwich terns “Splitterne” again. It looks like there are coming more of these each day. Other than that, the morning observation was not really different form other mornings. But it was still a nice morning!

Todays observations can be seen here.

After the morning observation, Joseph and I joined Hanelie with the ringing! I ringed a Song thrush “Sangdrossel”, a Robin “Rødhals”, Chiffchaff “Gransanger” and a Great tit “Musvit”. It was a really nice day!

The ringing:

Equipped with a bag of freshly washed bird bags – I had washed them yesterday – I started the first round this morning at 06:45 after I had opened all nets and looked at some moths and ate a little breakfast between opening time and first round.

Every round I had some, but not many birds. At 08:30 I woke up Joseph from his dreams, who had enjoyed some more sleep today, because I had a Starling “Stær” in the net, a species that he did not see in hand before and they are really beautiful to see from very close. We wanted to take a nice picture in the sun, so you could see all the beautiful shimmering colors of its plumage. The Starling “Stær” commented this with loud screaming, it can be a very noisy bird in hand. But we managed to get a star picture of it. As a reward, it got released and joined two other Starlings right away and we could watch them sitting on the tops of three trees, until they took off again.

Starling "Stær". Picture: Joseph Stephan

Joseph was also amazed of a beautiful 3k+ male Chaffinch “Bogfinke”, that I showed him through the window, so I decided to put a picture of it in the blog.

Chaffinch male/ Bogfinke, han. Picture: Hanelie Sidhu

Nets were open two more hours after standard time, there were still some birds and Marit and Joseph wanted to join on some rounds. We had two late flying Songthrushes “Sangdrossel”, usually I just get them in the nets in the first two rounds, so both Marit and Joseph could ring one.

The moths

I had nine moth species today and when I checked yesterday evening before going to bed. Besides many Xylocampa areola “Gedeblad-ugle” I also had many Cerastis rubricosa “Okkerrød Aprilugle” today. There was one new species for me, which was Orthosia cerasi “Rødgul forårsugle” and I was happy about Biston strataria “Broget vintermåler”, which was a bit hidden under the small windowsill of the lab window. It is a very beautiful moth, I think.

Orthosia cerasi “Rødgul forårsugle”. Picture: Hanelie Sidhu

Biston strataria “Broget vintermåler”. Picture: Hanelie Sidhu

There was also one caterpillar of Xestia xantographa “Gulmærket glansugle” next to the trap. I think they might also be attracted to the light, but usually don´t come, as they are not that mobile as the adult moths of course, without wings.

News from the station:

Bjørn and Andreas arrived for a spontaneous visit for the weekend at the station, it was a nice surprise to see them again. Now they went out to a plantation with Marit and Joseph to listen to Tengmalm´s owls and I heard they were successful!

I decided to stay here, there was still data to enter and to get some more sleep, tomorrow will be an early morning with good weather again.

At the station: Joseph Stephan, Marit Nillissen, Andreas Pedersen, Bjørn Frikke, Hanelie Sidhu