I was up a little later than previous days as I intended to ring later in the morning. I had a little bit of a seawatch before the day really began, but didn’t see much other than some migrating skylarks and the snow buntings having a day trip down from Grenen.

At midday I stuck the trap out so I could show some of the visitors how we catch and ring birds here, and to show them a redpoll in the hand, but for the first day in a week, none of them were interested in the trap or the food around it, so it was a bit of a bust. I remained in the birders club to answer any questions for visitors and to work on fine tuning the birders club film.

Later in the afternoon Gustav arrived and got settled in, we got to know each other in the flesh rather than over Facebook. I took a brief cycle ride up to Grenen to see if there was any birding to be done (there wasn’t) and took a detour on the way back looking for polecats, of which I saw some spoor. Just before dinner Gustav’s friend Anine arrived and we all discussed the tasks for tomorrow over dinner. Gustav is running a bird magic show at 11am in the the exhibition halls meeting room and we discussed the setup and the tasks afterward, such as shopping and ringing etc. We then finished off with a great game of ‘match the pair’ and a shuffleball tournament.

Fieldfare (Sjagger) at Grenen

I was up early and out at the nets. Despite my hopes, I did not get any thrushes in the morning, but nigh on 100% redpolls except for one recaptured yellowhammer that was ringed a few days ago. I kept the nets open for a little while but decided to close them and get on with net repair work until midday when there would be guests around to see the bird ringing in action.

I spent a good couple of hours on the mist net I’ve been working on for a few days, it’s heavily damaged, and in hindsight, it’s also bleached and therefore probably not worth repairing, but it serves as a good practice net. I’ve certainly improved my technique over the last few days. I set up the ground trap at midday and whilst waiting for it to catch something, I entered the diary post for the previous day. There were few visitors around at this time, so after a couple of rounds I closed the trap too, and returned to my net repair. By late afternoon I’d finally finished the first of several and set up the next net for repair tomorrow. Classically I chose both of the nets in the worst condition to start with!

After dinner I entered the DofBasen records for the day and planned the next day’s activities. Net repair is on the agenda, but also perhaps a trip to the harbour to check for white winged gulls and purple sandpipers.

A mealy redpoll (Nordlig gråsisken) a very small individual but not, in my estimation, quite meeting criteria for lesser (lille)

I was up early and out at Grenen by 9 (would have been quicker but I was birding on my way up there). Plenty of birds considering the time of year a large flock of 300 fieldfare contained two redwing, a flock of woodpigeon had a stock dove with them and there were plenty of corvids, magpies, hooded crows and 150+ jackdaws wheeling around the beach. The rough legged buzzard was still around, perched nicely on a fence post for me, if a little distant. The sea was pretty busy too, with 7 velvet scoters amongst almost 100 common, goldeneye, teal, mallard, eider. A few red throated divers flew past along with some guillemots. Some skylark were moving around, echoing what a friend of mine is finding further south, and eventually I picked up the four snow bunting on the beach, my first in Denmark. A great crested grebe on the sea was my first for Skagen, and I saw 33 species in total. I found a dead cormorant on the beach, and reflected that the name ‘great’ cormorant doesn’t really seem appropriate for a bird that seems so small in death.

After lunch I checked out the bikes, making sure the tyres were pumped up and preparing for my first trip into town to pick up some shopping. After this I spent a long time trying to find fieldfare calls for our MP3 player to hopefully catch some in the garden tomorrow morning. Trying to get a loud enough call was the issue, and whilst I have one, it’s not very loud. Hopefully it will work well with the apples on the ground though.

It’s been a long time since I got on a bike since last year, and this was possibly the worst word direction to cycle into town, as I barely moved without great effort. However it’s all good exercise and it was nice to familiarise myself with the town.

On return, I used a recipe taught to me by Michele, our Italian volunteer from last year and cooked myself pasta in a mushroom cream sauce (I’m not at all confident in the Italian to attempt to write the real name). It was good enough for a first try though. Tomorrow I intend to get up earlier than usual to try and get some thrushes in the mist nets, so unlike a lot of you on a Saturday evening, I went to bed early!

Snow bunting (snespurv) one of four on the beach northeast of the Lighthouse

’Great’ cormorant (skarv), doesn’t look so great when compared to the size of a human foot. 

This morning as I was on my own, I didn’t open the nets, and especially didn’t use the calls. Whilst I was writing the diaries and finding places to set up nets for repair I did have the ground trap running. I managed to process around 9 birds during the day, all of them redpolls. More recaptures in the trap than in the net yesterday despite the vast difference in numbers caught between them. Whilst I was working I had a visit from Michael Ancher briefly, who confirmed it was a good morning for redpolls (so I was right not to have the nets open when I was busy with other activities). Apparently we both recaptured the other sites redpolls today, still surprising that it was single figures considering how much ringing had gone on over the two days. 3 greylag geese flew over as we were chatting, my first for Skagen this year, and a mute swan had flown over during a misty period as I was setting up the trap earlier in the morning.

After a few hours, repairing nets outside was very painful for my fingers so I worked with Flemming and found a place inside where I could safely string up nets, out of the wind and cold! Hopefully this will make the job easier and quicker over the next few weeks. Before I even realised it the day was over, but I managed to spend a few minutes looking into Kattergat for any passing seabirds, though all I really saw was two species of gull and some eider.

After a pretty disastrous attempt at cooking something for dinner (will the frying pan ever be clean?!) I spent the evening entering data into DofBasen for my ringing and observation records. I intend to head up to Grenen tomorrow to get some much needed birding in so I turned in around 9pm.

Birds ringed       Birds recaptured
Gråsisken – 6      3

A mealy redpoll, clearly mocking me by perching on a rolled net . . 

Redpolls were present all day, feeding on the seeds we’d put out for them, even when I was working about 15 foot away.

The nets were open early this morning (considering the time of year!) and we had the redpoll calls on. From an empty garden, within 30 minutes we had a net full of birds and Simon and I were busy through the morning after only three rounds with birds. It was a very educational morning for me as it’s been almost a year since I last handled redpolls and we had a couple of lesser redpolls (lillle gråsisken) amongst the horde of mealy that we were ringing. There were some interesting patterns of moult present, with a bird that had had an interrupted moult and therefore retained some old secondaries, which was the only one with that kind of issue amongst the 91 redpolls we handled. We also handled a couple of great tits, some greenfinch and a couple of yellowhammer. It was a very busy morning for only five species!

After we’d finally finished, Simon headed off to Aalborg, and I started the weekly clean of the apartment, falling back into the weekly routine. Once that was done, I started to work on the broken mist nets we have from last year. There’s a lot of them, and the issue is trying to find places to erect them for fixing, especially in Skagen where it’s so windy! Nevertheless I managed to find a reasonable place and fixed a few holes, though fewer than I’d have liked, before the wind picked up and the light started to die.

I’d managed to get the daily diary finished before the big bird morning started so once it was dark I busied myself with DofBasen entries, social media and a few observatory computer tasks. My plan for tomorrow is to find a more suitable and permanent place to fix the nets so I can really get going on that before the ringing season really takes off. There were a few birds present during the morning, but the only one I really noticed was a whooper swan that flew invisibly past, calling, during the morning.

Ringed birds                  Retraps

Mealy redpoll - 87           Great tit - 2

Lesser redpoll - 2            Mealy redpoll - 1

Redpoll sp - 2

Yellowhammer - 2

Greenfinch - 3

Lesser redpoll (lille gråsisken) 

Mealy redpoll (stor gråsisken)

So I’ve returned to Skagen for another spring season, eager to see what birds I’ll see and what great experiences I’ll have.

I arrived 2 nights ago, and spent the majority of yesterday settling in, remembering names of birding areas, catching up with all the staff at Grå Fyr, seeing what birds were around. Today it was back to normal. Simon led a guided tour of 30 people, the largest we’ve had so far this year. It was a hands on experience, with children and adults helping Simon feed the birds in the garden, and moved on to the lab when we caught a female yellowhammer (gulspurv). Everyone seemed to have a good time.

After this Simon and I spent some time going through some changes in DofBasen on the station computer before he had a meeting at 4’o’clock with Lena and Kurt from the board to discuss the upcoming fuglefestival. I continued to work on the computer with some personal voluntary tasks after this point before cooking a quick dinner for myself.

At 7 Kurt gave a talk in the birders club which was well attended and very enjoyable. Before the talk started I had a chance to catch up with many of the locals I haven’t seen for over half a year which was very nice, still a lot more to catch up with but I’m only two days in! After the meeting Knud Pederson came up to the apartment and we discussed some changes to the reporting of birds on DofBasen and in particular some changes in the reporting of raptors (rovfugle). Simon is off abroad at the weekend, so we spent the rest of the evening going through upcoming tasks and opportunities, and having a quick tournament of shuffleball! I’m looking forward to getting some birding and ringing in over the next few days, and as I’ve not been at Skagen in winter before I’m eager to see how different the bird activity is.