Birdringing and mammalwatching

When we are spending a lot of time in the Station we experience not only super satisfying days with a lot of highlights, but also have to be ready to endure long periods with very few birds. In such days every bird caught in the net makes us happy, even if it is a recaptured Robin or a Chiffchaff. But we also feel that with every morning we hope more and more to see nets full of birds, or at least some extraordinary species. Luckily, ornithology teaches a lot of patience - it would be quite impossible to enjoy birding if we got annoyed every time when we don't see what we hoped for immediately. And this day was a perfect opportunity to train our patience. Thanks to that it was also a great day to rest, take care of other responsibilities and just use our time in this beautiful place. Between the rounds we took care of everyday duties: Menno vacuumed the floors, Mikkel took care of the dinner and Agata cleaned the bathroom. I was quite lucky (again) and I got putting in the data and writing the blog.

In the late afternoon me and Agata went on a little trip to the forest near Ho and to Skallingen. The latter was mostly an outstanding experience of cowwatching - there were A LOT of cows, standing next to and on the road that we were driving, so we got a chance to see them from a really small distance. Indeed 10/10 on a cuteness scale. We also saw there many Wheatears and singing Skylarks. Walk through the forest on the other hand was really successful in terms of watching deer. We saw numerous Red Deers and Fallow Deers, some of them were really calm and presented us their gorgeous antlers - although they are still growing and are quite far from reaching their final form, the ones that grew on heads of the most magnificent males were already stunning. We did not see too many birds however, but we had a chance to admire a White-tailed Eagle, as it flew from the tree just next to us.
Hopefully tomorrow we will be a bit more busy with ringing, although we are also ready for even less birds than today.

 

Close picture of Hawfinch's wing - these are one of the most peculiar flight feathers among all of European passerines. Photo: Maciej Wozniak