Cold and empty nets

Today the day started completely white. Luckily the nets were not frozen, so we were able to open up the nets. Because of the cold, we split up to be able to make every fifteen minutes a round to prevent any casualties. At some time, we switched who did the stationshaven so we were both able to eat some breakfast. Mikkel did not do the seawatch because of the cold, so he also helped us with the extracting the birds. Besides the helping with the ringing, Bello found a nice group of skylarks that were eating at the parking lot. Morten took some nice pictures of. Morten also saw a black redstart and a wheatear, I bet they did not expected the snow when they departured from their wintering grounds further south. Bello had today a day full of raptors. First, he saw a hen harrier, then we had a rough-legged buzzard hunting in the military zone, and he ended of with some buzzards and two white tailed eagles. The rough-legged buzzard is quite a good species, because there were no records of it in the area since autumn ’20. Because of the very faint undertail and whitish was on the upper side of the hand, it is probably a 2k (born last year).

Skylarks – Photo by Morten

My first full month has finished now, still three to go! I hope that the following months will be as good as last month. Last month, we caught a record number of birds, 498. In the history of this Fuglestation, there was no year were this many birds were caught. Unfortunately, we could not make 500 because there were almost no birds around on today, we only managed to catch 11 new birds. In total 27 species have been caught.

In the first month, there were quite some ringing highlights. What to think of the sparrowhawk? or of the long-tailed tit, and now I almost forget the fieldfare, all quite rare in spring in the nets.

From the observing there were also some highlights. The massive passage of waders and ducks, which were blown out of course and flew back to the waddensea and at the same day we saw a black guillemot. Next to that, we also saw a black scoter, a good find of Mikkel. Mikkel was sharp this month, resulting in a black tailed godwit and a great northern loon and serin

Ringing list (new/recapture):

Dunnock (3/0)

Robin (0/2)

Blackbird (2/2)

Goldcrest (0/1)

Chaffinch (1/0)

Greenfinch (1/0)

Redpoll (1/0)

Yellowhammer (1/0)

9 new birds over 6 species.

DOF link: https://dofbasen.dk/search/result.php?design=table&soeg=soeg&periode=dato&dato=31-03-2022&omraade=stor&stor=607&obstype=observationer&species=alle&sortering=dato

Folk på stationen: Bent, Bello, Morten and Menno

Ringing totals for march