Ringing:

The weather let me open the nets this morning and I was expecting quite a few birds after the rainy days, but the ringing session turned out quite slow. A few nice species still, and luckily some birds to show our guests who were here from 09:00!

Female Yellowhammer (Gulspurv)

The majority of the birds were Chiffchaffs (Gransanger) with a total of 7 caught, 4 new birds and 3 recaptures.

Chiffchaff (Gransanger)

Ringing:

Today the weather was rainy again so no ringing was carried out. Tomorrow looks better!

Little Tern project:

 There were no observation because of military training.

People at the station: Alix Bortolussi, Jorn de Jong, Rune, David Mastrup

Ringing:

Today I had the pleasure of ringing with Bent, who came to help me out with the number of birds increasing a little bit in the past couple of days. We had to open nets later than standard time as it was raining in the morning, but our ringing session still yielded a very good amount of birds, 37 in total! The best day for me since I arrived, and the fact we were two made it a lot more relaxed and calm than if I had been alone. Thank you Bent!

A highlight for today is the first Spotted Flycatcher (Grå Fluesnapper) of the season!

First Spotted Flycatcher (Grå Fluesnapper) of the season!

I have been catching more and more birds showing extensive brood patches, which is really sweet to see. The season is in full bloom, for birds and plants!

Tomorrow looks to be rainy unfortunately, so I will see how to deal with the ringing, if I can open nets at all. After two more intense days I wouldn’t mind a morning of sleeping in ahaha :)

Little tern project:

Today was another slow day for the Little Tern project. During today’s observation, four little terns were spotted, none of which landed in the fence. In addition, three to five common ringed plovers were seen in the fence, though they did not exhibit any nesting or scraping behavior.

At the station: Alix Bortolussi, Bent Jakobsen & Jorn de Jong

Ringing:

Today’s ringing session was unfortunately cut short because of sudden rain around 08:30. However, the birds did not disappoint in quantity and diversity! This day felt busy for me as I was alone, and worried about the unstable weather the whole morning. Some special birds showed up, like the first Red-Backed Shrike (Rødrygget Tornskade) of the season! A beautiful female.

Female Red-Backed Shrike 

I also had the pleasure of catching another Sedge Warbler (Sivsanger), which are pretty uncommon here.  For some reason, the Sedge Warblers I’ve caught and taken pictures of always insist on looking at the camera straight ahead, giving them a little bit of a goofy and clueless look. So cute!

Cute little forward facing Sedge Warbler

And last but not least, a visitor who is always so sweet to get in the hand, a talkative Icterine Warbler (Gulbug).

A yellow and talkative Icterine Warbler

After this short but intense session where I had to close nets in a hurry and even with some help from Jorn, I was so tired that I could not do much more for the rest of the day. Still, a good time with healthy birds, which made me feel like my efforts to take great care of the birds considering the weather were worth it.

Ringing is hard work, but oh so worth it!

Little tern project:

Today there was another observation for the Little Tern project. It was a relatively warm morning with heavy cloud cover. The observation was pretty quiet.In total I saw four little terns flying, but they didn’t land in the fence. There were, however, three common ringed plovers active in the fence for about 20 minutes before they too flew off. The Most exciting thing this morning was a big flock of around 15 Barn swallows flying over the fence which was nice to see.

Later that afternoon, Alix and I went to the beach to retrieve the 15 artificial tern nests and the trail cameras. Of the 15 nests we had set out, we found 13, one of which had not yet been predated. When we returned to the station, we checked to see if the trail cameras had captured any footage of the predators. Only one of the three cameras had some footage. It showed a fox and a crow eating the eggs at the same nest. Below is one of the photos the camera took.

A fox running away after eating the Quail eggs.

At the station: Alix Bortolussi & Jorn de Jong

Observations:

Vejr: VSV (240grd)/6,7 ms/8,5 grd/3:8/15 km sigt.

Det gik godt i dag. Jeg var godt underholdt de første 2 timer af morgenobsen, og dette grundet især ternetrækket. Lige fra morgenstunden var der godt gang i Hav og fjordterner som piskede forbi i pæne flokke. Den største flok var på 115 i et langt bånd. Det var alletiders! På 2 timer passerede lige omkring 1300 Hav/fjordterner, hvilket er den største dag for arten i år. 
Med terner følger kjover, og dem blev jeg heller ikke snydt for, idet 5 Almindelige kjover også lagde vejen forbi hukket. Altid dejligt med kjover i både lys og mørk form. Derudover sås 53 suler og 53 Rødlommer. 
Efter de 2 første timer døde det meget ud og den sidste time var stille. 

Ringing:

The weather for today looked a bit more promising than the past few days so Xenia and I had our hopes up for a nice morning of ringing. The first few rounds were pretty good with some highlights such as a recapture Yellowhammer (Gulspurv) and a Linnet (Tornirisk).

Beautiful male Yellowhammer (Gulspurv)

Male Linnet, very cute!

I also saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker hanging around the nets in a foresty area and kept hoping it would come in, but unfortunately not. Maybe another day!

At the closing round we spotted a cute little female Roe Deer feeding on the grass around some nets. Very cute encounter, and we could see that she knew the placement of the nets as she just gracefully slid under it to leave.

Roe deer feeding around the nets this morning

Little tern project:

 There were nog observations for the Little tern project due to the army training.

People at the station: Jorn de Jong, Alix Bortolussi, David Manstrup, Xenia 

Observations:

Vejret kl. 05.00: VSV (260grd) /10ms/8grd/8:8/5 km sigt – cirka 1 mm regn.
Det er et råkoldt forår, hvor temperaturen ligger på 8 grader i midt maj. Kunne vi evt få lidt mere varme, pleeeas?

Det var i dag hjemrejsedag for vores observatør Clara, så jeg fik lov at passe morgenobsen. Her skal lyde en stor tak for Claras indsats med observationerne dette forår.

Morgenen begyndte med regn den første halve time. Tællingen startede derfor først kl. 05.35, i stedet for klokken 5.00. Det blev en stille morgen på sydhukket, måske pga regn i resten af sydjylland. Derudover er havtrækket herude ved at gå på hæld, da vi har passeret datoen 15/5. Havtrækket daler kraftigt fra midt maj og frem. Jeg kunne nyde synet af 2 mørkfase nordtrækkende Almindelige kjover tæt på kysten, og 120 nordtrækkende Hav/fjordterner som kom i spredte småflokke, men ellers intet nævneværdigt.

I morgen skulle regnen være mindre, så måske har jeg bedre held i morgen, hvor jeg også er på pletten.    

(DMa)

Ringing:

Today the weather was too bad for me to open the nets at the standard time in the morning once again, so I decided to open the garden nets for a few hours for fun in the afternoon when the rain stopped and before the wind picked up even more. These hours were not the most successful but I still managed to ring two new birds and recapture two already ringed birds. Not completely vain efforts!

Tomorrow, Xenia comes back to help me ring in the morning and the weather looks like it’ll be nicer, so I am hopeful for some good birds after a few days of unvoluntary break!

Little Tern Project:

 There were no observations for the Little tern project due to the bad weather and the army training.

People at the station: Jorn de Jong, Alix Bortolussi, David Manstrup.

Observations/ Ringing /Little terns project : 

There were no birdwatching/ringing activities today because of the stormy weather ! So everyone could take a day-off and rest a bit ! And I (Clara) could take the time to pack my things whilst listening to music !

----- time to say bye bye ------ 

I suppose it's time to write my last blog post of the season and say goodbye to all (until next time). 

It’s already been two months since I arrived! Time flies (like a bird) at the observatory; it feels like a different world.
I must say that at first, I was stepping completely into the unknown, as this was my first experience at a bird observatory, working and living at a foreign station.

I’ve learnt so much over the past two months, with wonderful first sightings of birds such as arctic skuas, pomarine skua, black terns , the wryneck that Robert and Hanelie caught & others!

I’ll always remember those magical moments at sunrise, with the low-angled light and the birds beginning to migrate on the horizon. The marvellous spectacle of flocks of red-throated divers high in the sky, little terns feeding on the shore than an arctic skuas chasing the little terns, accompanied by the characteristic songs of  blavand, the skylarks and their tireless melodies, the yellowhammers, linnets and white wagtails and later in spring season the little terns !

Yes, of course, there were mornings that were tougher than others, when it was cold, when you were alone and there were few birds. But that’s all part of the experience and what makes it enriching. And then, over the course of those two months, we could always count on one another ! 

Thanks to the great atmosphere at the station, we were all able to push ourselves and help each other out as best we could :) - sometimes a windspan game could help also ! -

There were so many wonderful encounters, and I really do think this experience was as much about people as it was about birds!

A huge thank you to Henrik, Thomas, David, Bent, Hanelie, Jorn, Joseph, Alix, Morten, Robert, Mathilde, Rose, Morgan, Karin & Paula !  

Last picture in the dunes whilst it was still sunny ! I used to love taking the time in the afternoon to do the big walk around blavand and draw the birds and the animals i could spot ! That was such a pleasure. 

Bye bye, take care of each others and the birds and see u soon !!!!!!!!!


At the station: Alix Bortolussi, Clara Delahaye & Jorn de Jong

Observations:

It rained early this morning. Henrik and I waited for the showers to stop before going to the dunes. The number of migratory birds was good today - the migration trend is indeed slowing down for the season -.
We spotted 211 red-throated loons [rødstrubet lom], 87 northern gannets [sule] and 143 common terns/arctic terns [fjordterne/havterne]. 
We also saw 2 arctic skuas [almindelig kjove] - dark morph - heading north ! My last skuas of the season because i'm leaving n the 16th, so it was a nice bye-bye gift  :)) 

Todays observations can be seen here.

Flock of sanderlings [sandløber] in their breeding plumage and a crow at the back. Picture by Henrik Bøhmer

Ringing:

The nets had to be opened late this morning again due to the rain, but in the end Xenia and I still had a pretty good ringing morning. The total number of birds is slightly up today, with a rather big amount of recaptures which is interesting. The variety of species was the highlight of the day though, with some Bullfinches (Dompap), Wood Pigeon (Ringdue), or a beautiful female Goldfinch (Stillits).

Female Goldfinch (Stillits), Picture Alix

Xenia had a wish of catching some Lesser Whitethroats (Gærdesanger) and Common Whitethroats (Tornsanger), which she did, so that was very nice! They can be quite tricky to age at this time of year, so it’s always good with some practice.

Little tern project:

Today, i could finally do another observation for the Little Tern project. The weather wasn’t great, with strong winds of 8 m/s and quite a bit of cloud cover. This, combined with the fact that there were no little terns again, made for a long and cold observation. The only birds using the fence were three Common ringed plovers exhibiting roosting behavior.

Later in the morning, Joseph visited the exclosure to measure the sand drift that had build up over the past few weeks. After that was done we set up a total of 15 artificial nests at three locations. We distributed these across three sites, spanning five different habitat gradients. Every nest consists of 2 Quail- & 1 wax egg. The purpose of the nests is to see how quickly and by which animals they are preyed upon. I will be checking up on these every two days over the coming weeks. We also placed 3 wildlife cameras, one in every location, to hopefully capture some good footage.

Picture of an artificial nest we made with a wax egg in the middle. Picture by Jorn de Jong

At the station: Alix Bortolussi, Clara Delhaye, Jorn de Jong, Joseph Stephan, Henrik Böhmer & Xenia

Observation:

There was no standard observations due to the rain this morning. I could go out in the afternoon to do a walk in the beach and spot some species. 

So here are the observations of the afternoon. 

Ringing: 

This morning started out being rainy, so I unfortunately couldn’t open the nets at the standard time and instead had to open them at 07:30. With the standard time being compromised anyway, I thought I would take an easier session and only had the garden nets open for 4h.

This yielded very few birds, unsurprisingly, only 4 birds caught in total. The next few days looks rather uncertain weather-wise too, so I will see how that turns out!

A Willow Warbler (Løvsanger) caught today

Little tern project:

There were no observations for the Little tern project due to the bad weather and the army training.

At the station : Clara Delahaye, Jorn de Jong & Alix Bortolussi

Observation:

Not much to say today, the spring season is going slower and slower ;) 

Todays observations can be seen here.

Ringing:

Today was pretty windy, so I had to keep an eye on the nets and unfortunately had to close several of them during the morning as they became too exposed.

The first few rounds were interesting, as the first bird I caught for the morning was a beautiful female Red Crossbill (Lille Korsnæb) for the season! This was a new bird species ringed for me, and I had a lot of fun studying her and getting some practice on steel rings.

Red (Common) Crossbill female (Lille Korsnæb)

This female showed a brood patch, which is a patch of unfeathered skin on the underbelly made to facilitate the incubation of eggs, providing a warm surface. It was nice to see that we have some breeding pairs of Crossbills around! I hope to see some of their young when the time comes.

I also had the chance of catching another Starling (Stær).

Starling (Stær) 

Little tern project:

There were no observations for the Little tern project this morning due to the heavy wind and the army training.

At the station : Clara Delahaye, Jorn de Jong & Alix Bortolussi