Brexit, Birds and Borders

God aften from Blåvand Fuglestation from the newest volunteer. I am English former lawyer, who worked in Papua New Guinea last year, who will be moving to Seychelles for two years in May, but you can call me James. I am also joined by my partner, Lisa, from Bremen in Germany, who I am sure will be introducing herself in due course. In the meantime, here we are in a moment of good weather.

The doubtless legions of committed fans of BirdLife Denmark may remember me from Skagen's blogs earlier this year. I had the pleasure of spending February in Skagen, which despite storms and snow, was a delight. I was regularly reminded in Skagen how unfortunate it was to have been at one of Denmark's premier birding spots in such bad weather. I am therefore optimistic to be returning in April. Optimisim only gets you so far though and we have mainly be consigned to the house for the last two days due to fairly biblical amounts of rain. 

The weather did allow for a three hour seawatch this morning. Henrik assured us that 'on paper' this should be a good day for birds. The wind was blowing gently from the south-west and we were temporarily free from rain. Henrik foresaw a good day for Gannets (Sule) and trusted me with counting them. My numbed fingers were prepared to be warmed by potentially 'hundreds' of Gannets to count on my clickers, but had to be satisfied with six across three hours. Seawatch was unfortunately a pretty accurate description of what we got up to...Nevertheless, we did have plenty of time to discuss all the normal topics for a Brit and a Dane meeting for the first time. Three hours was just about enough to cover Brexit and the potential dissolution of the United Kingdom. 

It was not an entirely fruitless endeavour though. When we arrived on Wednesday, Henrik asked Lisa and me what birds we wanted to see. Arctic Skua (Almindelig kjove) was top of the list and Blåvand obliged on the first day. We also made a wish for the Northern Lights so are already halfway there to completing our bucket list. It is good though that we are making quick progress as I was politely informed at the Danish border that I had 24 days in the Schengen Area before I would be an illegal immigrant. With a potential two year ban from the European Union for disobeying and our wedding in Germany planned for next year, I think Lisa's appetite for testing the patience of the rules is regrettably limited. In the meantime, I will try and find out whether 'finding rare birds' forms one of the exemptions to the rules...

The rain arrived as forecast around 10:30am, driving us all inside to defrost. The ringers had little more luck than us today, despite Morten's optimistic wish that the birds would be chased by the rain into his nets. 

Dagens ringmærkning:

Folk på stationen: Bianca, Maxim, James, Lisa, Henrik og Morten