A visit from Mr. and Mrs. Hawfinch

Morning observations:

Hopeful for another morning like yesterday, Thomas, Emma and I went to the observation spot like usual. There was quite a lot of wind this morning, so we placed ourselves a bit more secluded from the wind. The morning started off quite slow unfortunately, which didn’t give us much hope compared to the day before. We focussed however and waited for the migration to ramp up.
Over time the birds actually sort of started to show up. These were still not high numbers at all though and we didn’t get many different species. A quite nice surprise though was that the birds were flying very close to the shore. We saw multiple sandwich terns “Splitterne” and gannets “Sule” showing off their identifying features, which was quite a sight!
Another thing that was very impressive to see was the huge amount of resting scoters “Sortand” right in front of us. We counted around 3500 this time! Later during the obs David also joined us. And while he didn’t really have anything to look at in the air, he was able to search in between the common scoters for any other scoter species. He however didn’t find any.
But even though the numbers this morning weren’t great, we still had a great time talking to each other about a whole array of topics! We’ll see what tomorrow and the last week of observations will bring, but let’s save that for the next blog.

Today´s observations can be seen here.

The ringing:

I went out later than usual when I am opening on my own because it was raining util a little after 4:00. Luckily it did not look like there would be more rain coming so I went out and hurried with opening the nets. It was still a bit windy, I could not open all and managed to have all standard nets open just five minutes after the usual opening time. Content with myself I waited for the first round. The birds were not impressed though; first round was a zero round. In the second round, I got two recaptures, one of them was yesterday´s Barred Warbler “Høgesanger”. It was very well on time, yesterday it was in the net at the same time, not the same net though but very close to where I had found it yesterday. The Barred Warbler “Høgesanger” is doing well at Blåvandshuk, it had gained one gram of weight since yesterday. The conditions last night were not perfect to move on, it was windy and rained in parts of the night, that is probably why it was still here. David, who had not seen it yesterday, could now also admire this nice bird.

I got two more 1K birds today, a Chaffinch “Bogfinke” and a Linnet “Tornirisk”.

Linnet/ Tornirisk 1K. Picture: Marit Nillissen

Other birds have still large brood patches, I assume their young are not so far yet. As for example the female Hawfinch “Kernebider”, that flew in together with her male later this morning.

Hawfinch male and female/ Kernebider han og hun. Picture: Marit Nillissen

The moths:

The unfavorable weather conditions that probably made the Barred Warbler “Høgesanger” stay here also did not make the moths fly much. I found only four in the traps today. There is a lot of rain today, so I won´t put on the light tonight.

Eupithecia nanata/ Smalvinget lyngdværgmåler, a quite pretty one of the pugs. Picture: Hanelie Sidhu

At the station: Marit Nillissen, Thomas Kristensen, Emma Gray, Joseph Stephan, Levi van den Os, David Manstrup and Hanelie Sidhu