Tricked by mice (or partridges "agerhøne"?)

Hey blogreaders!

Today was the first full day at the station of me and Marion and we immediately started with the Fulmar survey at Gammel Skagen. It took us only some minutes before we found our first dead guillemot "lomvie", but it wouldn’t be our last.  While walking along the beach, Hanelie explained to us how we had to write down the dead birds and which we had to collect. Meanwhile, we taught Marion about the common seabirds in the area. Surprisingly, we found the first (and second) ringed plover "stor præstekrave" for the season, accompanied by some sanderlings "sandløber".

While searching for dead birds, I was really focused on the gulls on the beach because there would be an Iceland gull "hvidvinget Måge" and glaucous gull "gråmåge" present around Skagen. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any of those beautiful gulls. Nevertheless, I paid special attention to the subspecies of herring gull "sølvmåge": argentatus/argenteus and we found a nice pair of wings of the latter.

At the tip in Grenen, more snow buntings "snespurv" than the days before were present (around 40), which makes us hopeful to catch some of them later this week. Our survey took longer than expected because we found no less than 62 dead birds which is a sad record. We mainly found guillemots "lomvie" but also five puffins "lunde" and a fulmar "mallemuk". We were glad we could closely observe a young male common scoter "sortand" at the end of the survey.

After seeing two dead seals, I could finally see a living one here. We were all adored by this creature and Marion could take some nice pictures.

Back at the station, we put the collected birds in the freezer and filled our hungry stomachs with some delicious food from yesterday. We continued our afternoon by completing the excel sheets. Meanwhile, Simon got a lift from Rie Voertmann to the station. Back at the station, he prepared an exciting project for later in the spring. Karin made a walk and found some nice seals on the beach.

We interrupted our computer work with an excursion to the grocery store. We met Alice Scalzo, our fourth volunteer, at the parking. She had had a long day with waking up at 1 AM, taking two plains and a train. Thomas Mose, a local birdwatcher, was so kind to bring her to the birding station. The four of us will be the team for the next two weeks, then a Danish volunteer will join us for the rest of the weeks.

When we arrived back from the shop, Hanelie was thrilled to catch the partridges "agerhøne" that are foraging around the station. She thought of a master plan to catch them, involving the four of us. We immediately found them with the thermal camera and tried to chase them in the nets. Unfortunately, after many attempts, we couldn’t catch or find them. After looking with the thermal camera again, I realized there were no partridges "agerhøne" but we were tricked by mice! We had a good laugh at ourselves and called it a day.

In the evening, we split the tasks to gain time. We cooked and we continued with entering the data. Our chef, Marion, thought about a great meal and all of us were eating together.

Observations during the Fulmar survey

Today’s observations in Dofbasen from observers in the area

Tomorrow, the four of us are going to Grenen to observe the migrating seabirds helped by the skills of Knud.

Keep updated on our posts because next days, some exciting tasks are waiting for us!

Robbe

People: Alice Scalzo, Marion L´Huiller-Hunsinger, Robbe Cool, Simon S. Christiansen, Hanelie Sidhu and Karin