A Sparrowhawk and a Skua

Ringing: Today was a quite slow day in the garden, but the Yellow-browed Warbler (Hvidbrynet Løvsanger) from yesterday came back, so we could adore it again, and just as we had processed it, Strummer came back with a Sparrowhawk (Spurvehøg) in hand! Also such a beautiful bird, and I hope we'll catch some more!

The young male Sparrowhawk from today, sexed by the size (the females are BIGGER), and aged on the overall plumage characteristics and the lack of moult limits - in older birds there will usually always be several generations of feathers present. Pictures by Henrik Böhmer.

Another interesting bird from today was a young Bullfinch (Dompap), that unlike our last young bullfinch was finally growing it's male-coloured feathers!

A young Bullfinch with male-coloured (red) pinfeathers on the flank. Picture by Strummer Edwards.

Today's numbers:

Observations: Man, am I beginning to sympathise with Johan by now…

Lately, if you have been reading the obs-blog, you might have noticed a pattern with westerly
winds resulting in blogs where either Johan or I complain about boring obs with no exciting
species. And this was just another day of that… almost.

The most prevalent species today were the usual suspects: 884 Common Scoters (Melanitta nigra), 54
Red-throated Loons (Gavia setallata), and 208 Meadow Pipits (Anthus pratensis) - not terrible, but
not exciting either.

The other species migrating today were also “just” the usual passerines, with mostly Grey
Wagtails (Motacilla cinerea), Chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs), Eurasian Siskins (Spinus spinus),
and Tree Pipits (Anthus trivialis). The day was looking to be incredibly boring, until Jakob
suddenly said: “Anton, I have a weird bird in my scope; could you take a look?”. I looked into my
scope, and lo and behold, a beautiful Arctic Skua (Stercorarius parasiticus) was making its way
across the horizon. While Arctic Skuas aren’t rare by any stretch of the imagination, in the last 4
days I have been at obs, ZERO Arctic Skuas were present. I was beginning to doubt they even
existed at Blåvand!

All in all, that Arctic Skua saved the obs today, and I left "Hukket" with a somewhat satisfied disposition. 

Todays observations

Other things: In the evening, just as we were about to sit down for dinner, Jacob came running in the door shouting about a Great Skua (Storkjove), that he had been chilling with on the beach for 15 minutes (without his phone), and soon after we were all out looking for it. We never refound it, but we got some fresh air and a nice sunset.

A sunset without a Great Skua. Picture by Mathilde Sif Eiby.

At the station: Strummer Edwards, Mathilde Sif Eiby, Jakob Hansen, and Anton Ræbild Jensen