The wind was once again too strong today for any ringing activities. We made a short trip to Kabeltromlen to take down three nets to fix back at the lab. It was actually quite fun and cozy to sew them in the attic this afternoon.

We also decided to go for a quick swim. It was Aurora and Chris’ first time in Danish waters – which were cold, but we all quite enjoyed ourselves.

Martin took some time to go through a few of the night recordings from earlier this month. The delay for the processing was due to 4 nights between the 6th and the 14^th of October. The first highlight is a new Barn Owl (Slørugle) for the year during the night of the 10^th, quickly followed by another one the night after! Quite a crazy year for that species with the sighting we had earlier in the week. The 2 most interesting nights happened on the 11^th and 13^th with a very good diversity for the former, and crazy numbers for the thrushes for the latter! At least 13 species were recorded in the night of the 11^th, including at least 3 species of Goose with numerous flocks: Barnacle Goose (Bramgås), Greylag Goose (Grågas), and Pink-footed Goose (Kortnæbbet Gås) with probably some Great White-fronted Goose (Blisgås) in that flock.

Moving on to the 13^th, that night was less diverse but quite busy: Redwings (Vindrossel) and Blackbirds (Solsort) were the most numerous with 739 and 144 individuals calling, respectively. We are really looking forward to what the next nights of nocturnal migration have to offer, so stay tuned!

You can find the nocturnal migration data on Trektellen here

The day ended in a highlight: Leif and Lisbeth made a delightful dinner for us – a great appetizer with avocado and shrimp, followed by a Danish dish that translates into “meatballs and carrots”. It was absolutely delicious!

Tomorrow looks good for ringing, so all of us will go to Kabeltromlen. It will be Aurora’s last day with us, sadly, so hopefully we get a rarity (or a tick for Aurora) in the nets!

No Ringmærkning data for today.

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

People: Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo, Chris Ketola, Martin Grienenberger, Knud Pederson, Amelie Zeller, Simon S. Christiansen, Christina Stinn, Leif & Lisbeth 

Once again the wind conspired against us and sadly we could not open our ringing nets, but everyday at Skagen is still a good day! The sun even managed to peek through the clouds in the afternoon to produce a beautiful rainbow.

Although the wind kept our nets closed, Martin and Knud braved the conditions as usual for their sea migration counting. It was a relatively quiet day with the highlight being a single Great Northern Diver (Islom) and a massive Black-Throated Diver (Sortstrubet Lom) which gave Knud the chance to share more of his limitless knowledge with Martin!

Today was Laila’s last day working in the lighthouse exhibition, her enthusiasm and great attitude will be missed! Hopefully she will be back next season!

After seeing the first Barn Owl (Slørugle) at Skagen in 18 years the night before, our team was hopeful about the prospects of catching an owl, but the wind was very strong and once again they came up empty. However the team had a great time sharing stories and boding in the dunes!

After dinner Chris and Aurora went out in the driving winds for a night catching session. Although they didn’t see any birds they did have stunning views of the moon over the Skagen Lighthouse.

Today was also te first full day at Skaegn for our new guests Leif and Lisbeth. Hopefully the weather improves and Leif can see a Bearded Tit (Skægmejse) foir the first time! 

People: Christina Stinn, Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo, Chris Ketola, Martin Grienenberger, Knud Pedersen, Amelie Zeller, Laila Neermann, Lisbeth & Leif

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

After we GPS-tagged the first Blackbird (Solsort) for the ICARUS Global Thrush Project yesterday evening, we celebrated all together and went out for dinner in Skagen last night. We had a nice evening and especially enjoyed having Lisa as our guest yesterday and today.

Then, this morning we were excited to catch our second Blackbird (Solsort) in our nets at Kabeltromlen in the first round! It is this first calendar year female.

We named her after our dear guest Kirsten who visits the station several times a year. We’re looking forward to following Kirsten on her journey.

Else, we didn’t catch so many birds today. Among them was this Fieldfare (Sjagger)

and this first calendar year and very grumpy Greenfinch (Grønirisk).

We closed early and used our time listening to an interesting presentation by Chris. He talked about his work in Peru for the organization “Fauna Forever”. He told us about their projects and focused on talking about the different birds they catch. It was also interesting to hear how they age and sex birds there, as you cannot think in calendar years like you do it here in Europe.

You can also take part in Chris’ session! We filmed him during the presentation and will share the link to the video in a few days.

In the afternoon, Christina was working on editing the videos from the presentation. Simon and Lisa left for Aalborg. Before sunset Chris, Aurora, Martin and I will open the Owl-Nets at Grenen and will try and catch that Barn Owl (Slørugle) we saw a couple of days ago.

Ringmærkning (Kabeltromlen)

Blåmejse -Blue Tit - 2

Bogfinke -Chaffinch - 2

Dompap – Bullfinch - 2

Dompap, Lille – Wester European Bullfinch - 2

Fuglekonge – Goldcrest - 2

Gærdesmutte – Wren - 2

Grønirisk – Greenfinch - 1

Jernspurv – Dunnock - 1

Munk – Blackcap - 2

Musvit – Great Tit - 2

Rødhals – Robin - 3

Rørspurv – Reed Bunting - 1

Sjagger – Fieldfare - 1

Vindrossel – Redwing – 2

Total: 25

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

People: Christina Stinn, Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo, Chris Ketola, Martin Grienenberger, Knud Pedersen, Amelie Zeller, Simon S. Christiansen & Lisa Vergin

Another day of rain and very strong winds. That only means no ringing so I used the morning to finish an important application for my PhD. The team also spend time on various things, Christina and I went shopping in the afternoon, Chris worked on his presentation and Amelie updated the archive pictures of the previous days ringing. Again, Martin was the only one that could do some seabird counting but he didn’t find many birds, the highlight was 2 Great Northern Divers (Islom).

However, the weather gave us a break and gifted us with these marvelous views.

The tour seemed to cancel at the beginning of the day, but that changed and some people showed up, Simon explained them various things about the station and they seemed quite happy although the terrible weather.

Later in the afternoon we put some more nets up to try to catch Blackbirds (Solsort) for the project ICARUS, but our hopes were very low as we did not see any bird during the process.

When we thought nothing exciting will happen we got an adult male Blackbird (Solsort). A tag was deployed and released. Hopefully, this project will inform us of the different migration routes that these guys take.

Now we are all going out for the station dinner, how exciting!!!

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

People: Christina Stinn, Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo, Chris Ketola, Martin Grienenberger, Knud Pederson, Amelie Zeller and Simon S. Christiansen & Lisa Vergin

Hygge morning at the Kabbeltromlen, with a small team composed of Amelie, Christina and me. It’s been more than 2 weeks that we didn’t ring all the three of us together ! Simon joined us for half an hour before another meeting day for him. Jørgen and Igor came by and stayed the whole morning, as well as Erik, who went also for a walk around Grenen.

We had a slow but nice morning but a few birds, including quite a few Bullfinches (Dompap). We then had plenty of time to ring them and take time to look at ageing characters. The highlights from today are those 3 beautiful Bearded Tits (Skægmejse) or this unexpected but very welcome Siberian Chiffchaff (Sibirisk Gransanger).

Fieldfare - Sjagger

Bearded Tits - Skaegmejse

Meadow Pipit - Engpiber (c) Jørgen Kabel

Siberian Chiffchaff - Sibirisk Gransanger (c) Jørgen Kabel

Chris joined Knud at World’s End 3 for his first migration counting here. He enjoyed a few lifers and great views at a Great Northern Diver (Islom). As he said, 4 hours spent counting just fly really fast and are worth fetting cold feet ! His highlights from this morning are Black Guillemot.

Aurora stayed at the lighthouse since she still had some work for her PhD applications.

A Little Auk (Søkonge) added some excitement to our afternoon. Anders Bojesen found it near a sand duneand brought it to our station. It had a small wound on its neck from being attacked. It was still feisty and after examining it quickly we released it back into the sea and it swam off. Hopefully this adorable little thing will be ok.

Ringmærkning (Kabeltromlen)

Great Spotted Woodpecker (Stor Flagspætte) – 1
Blue Tit (Blamejse) – 10
Great Tit (Musvit) – 5
Bearded Tit (Skaegmejse) – 3
Siberian Chiffchaff (Sibirisk Gransanger) – 1
Blackcap (Munk) – 2
Goldcrest (Fuglekonge) – 1
Wren (Gaerdesmutte) – 1
Robin (Rodhals) – 4
Redwing (Vingdrossel) – 1
Fieldfare (Sjagger) – 1
Meadow Pipit (Engpiber) – 1
Bullfinch (Dompap) – 15
Reed Bunting (Rorspurv) - 3

Total: 49

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

People: Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo, Chris Ketola, Martin Grienenberger, Knud Pedersen, Amelie Zeller, Simon S. Christiansen, Jørgen Kabel, Erik Christophersen

It was too windy to ring at Kabeltromlen today, so Amelie, Chris, and Aurora decided to try to catch Snow Buntings (Snespurv) at the beach in Grenen.

There was a nice flock of Snow Buntings on the beach that was merrily going about its business, but never seemed to want to go too close to the nets. As the morning wore on, more tourists came onto the beach and began to investigate the nets, which didn’t help matters. Around noon, the ringers tried to “herd” the Snow Buntings into the net from several sides, and for a moment it looked like the birds were going to fly straight into the mesh – but when the Buntings were 20 meters away, they suddenly rose higher up in the air and flew over the nets. Well, it was a sunny and windy day today, and the nets were quite visible. So, Snow Buntings: 1, Ringers: 0.

Next time, we will go out earlier when there are fewer tourists around. The early ringer catches the bird! Hopefully, it will be less windy then and somewhat overcast skies wouldn’t hurt, either.

I went to World’s End 3 this morning for migration counting. I joined Martin and Knud a little later than usual because I had a translation job to finish. Before I arrived, Martin and Knud saw two Little Auks (Søkonge) and a Pomerine Skua (Mellemkjove) – too bad I missed them! But we had nice numbers all morning, with over 600 Northern Gannets (Sule) and more than 5,500 Razorbills (Alk).

Last night, Chris and Aurora caught a juvenile Great Black-backed Gull (Svartbag) and an adult male Common Scoter (Sortand) – very exciting! Aurora has some pretty mean-looking bruises on her hands and arms because the Great Black-backed Gull was quite feisty. But she has a lot of experience ringing seabirds (including gulls), so she did not shy away from the job.

We are going night catching again this evening – this time, we are targeting a more challenging group of birds: owls! Stay tuned for updates, we will certainly let you know if we catch anything. Perhaps a Short-eared Owl (Mosehornugle)?

No Ringmærkning data for today.

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

People: Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo, Chris Ketola, Martin Grienenberger, Knud Pederson, Amelie Zeller, Simon S. Christiansen, Christina Stinn, Jørgen + Karin 

After a night of heavy rain, the trails around the ringing station were very muddy and flooded. Ringing was quite slow for most of the morning, however we did catch a large flock of Coal, Great and Blue Tits (Sortmejse, Musvit, Blåmejse).

Martin, Christina and Knud had a much more exciting day highlighted by many rarities including a Gray Phalarope (Thorshane), one Puffin (Lunde), White-billed and Great Northern Divers (Hvidnæbbet Lom and Islom), Pomarine Skua (Mellemkjove) and a light morph Arcitc Skua (Storkjove).

Photo: Knud Pedersen

The night before Chris and Aurora did not see any birds during their night catching session, but they did find many Natterjack toads (Strandtudse)!

In other news our Blackbird (Solsort) solar powered tracking tags arrived. These will send location data to the International Space Station allowing researchers to track the migratory movements of this species. Once the units have had a good charge in the sun we will begin attaching them to Blackbirds, hopefully this weekend.

Finally the whole team pitched in for the weekly station house cleaning session. Simon claims we have the cleanest bird observatory in Scandinavia, a title we want to keep!

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

People: Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo, Chris Ketola, Martin Grienenberger, Knud Pederson, Amelie Zeller, Simon S. Christiansen,

Yesterday night, Simon and I came back from the Blåvand Bird Observatory. We spent some days there to practise preparing and putting on tags on Blackbirds (Solsort). Our supervisor was Kaspar Thorup who is very experienced in tagging birds with GPS. We were lucky and could already tag 12 Blackbirds, so in the next weeks we are excited to follow them on their journey. For me it was also interesting to get to know another bird station, helping the volunteers with their daily work and getting to know great people. When Simon and I arrived at home, Chris, Aurora, Christina and Martin were in the lab ringing the first ever Wigeon (Pibeand) for the station, they just caught a few meters from the lighthouse!

This morning Christina and I opened the nets half an hour before sunrise at 8. We had a very foggy ringing day with not so many birds, but we got some nice species today.

Fieldfare (Sjagger):

Jacksnipe (Enkeltbekkasin), the first one that was ringed here at the station using a mist net:

this very handsome male Bearded Tit (Skægmejse):

Martin had some quite good observations today. He saw 3 different species of Skuas: Great Skua (Storkjove), Arctic Skua (Almindelig Kjove) and Pomerine Skua (Mellemkjove)! He also saw some Shore Larks (Bjerglærke) and Lapland Buntings (Lapværling).

In the afternoon Christina and I took down the nets in the old lighthouse garden and put them up in the station garden, because we will start feeding in about a week.

After that we had some data entry and checking to do. At the evening meeting we talked about some small projects we want to do in the next weeks. Chris will give us an interesting session about his work in Peru, where he is ringing birds in the Amazon. He will talk about different species they catch there and how to age them. It is always interesting to listen to his stories, not only about birds, but also about catching crocodiles with bare hands…

We also want to try and put up some mist nets for Owls and Water Pipits (Bjergpiber) in the next weeks.

Ringmærkning (Kabeltromlen):

Blåmejse - Blue Tit - 4

Dompap, Lille – Western European Bullfinch – 2

Dompap, Stor – Northern European Bullfinch – 1

Enkeltbekkasin – Jack Snipe - 1

Fuglekonge – Goldcrest - 2

Gærdesmutte – Wren - 3

Gråsisken, Nordlig – Common Redpoll -1

Jernspurv – Dunnock - 1

Munk – Blackcap - 1

Musvit – Great Tit - 7

Rødhals – Robin - 1

Sangdrossel – Songthrush – 2

Sjagger – Fieldfare - 1

Skægmejse – Bearded tit - 1

Vindrossel – Redwing - 3

Total: 31

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

People: Simon S. Christiansen, Christina Stinn, Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo, Chris Ketola, Martin Grienenberger, Jørgen Kabel & Igor, Amelie Zeller

Today was one of those typical autumn days with strong winds, rain and low temperatures. With these conditions, bird ringing is not possible, and the majority of the team was forced to remain indoors. Being indoors gave us a great opportunity for desk-based tasks. I spent half of the afternoon arranging and classifying the pictures taken in the field from the last 4 days. 

Some birds are very difficult to age or even distinguish to other similar species, that is why taking pictures from different parts of the bird helps us to learn and share this knowledge with others. Also, these pictures produce a great database that in the future could be used for research, showing for example how moult limit varies between different countries or over time.
Christina used the time to work on her presentation for the next week and kindly volunteered to wash the bird bags. Keeping the bird bags clean is a very important task because helps to minimize the transmission of infections between birds. She also did some administrative task like printing new ringing sheets and laminating others to protect them from the rain. She also delighted us with amazing home-made cookies. 

Chris has been doing a lot of literature review about neotropical birds from the Amazon where we works and together we also worked on a couple of grants applications for my PhD project.
Martin was the only one brave enough to go out for seabird counting. Two little auks (Søkongen) passed very close to him. The numbers of razorbills (Alk) are decreasing but still, he counted 2800 individuals, on the other hand, common guillemot (Lomvien) numbers are getting higher and today were counted 300 also 638 kittiwakes (Ride). Knud and Martin played this game in guessing how many guillemots (Lomvien) were in a single flock but Knud is always the winner. In the afternoon Martin tried to spot some petrels (Stormsvale) from the lighthouse with luck.

Simon and Amelie were back today from their training on blackbird tagging, they will be sharing all the information the following days.

Night cathing wasn’t very productive last night but the weather and temperatures were very pleasant.

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

Today was amazing day for migration counting! On his way to World’s End 3 before sunrise, Martin saw 10 Little auk (Søkonge) flying south, not far from the beach. The day was already off to a promising start! By the early afternoon Martin, Knud, and his friend had counted 14,049 razorbills (Alk) – yes, you read that right. This is the second highest count for razorbills since the observatory was opened in 2017, with close to 17,500 razorbills (Alk) counted in early November 2018. Today was also a good day for Whooper swan (Sangsvane), with a few flocks totaling 47 individuals. In addition, the observers counted 368 Black-legged Kittiwake (Ride) – not a bad day at all!

It was much quieter for us at Kabeltromlen, with only 46 new birds in total. However, Aurora ringed her first Bearded tit (Skægmejse), which she was very excited about. Also, we were happy to have Oluf out at Kabeltromlen with us.

I was excited to take a Great spotted woodpecker (Stor Flagspætte) out of the net, even if it was a recapture:

Another highlight was the Yellowhammer (Gulspurv), which is perhaps not the rarity we were hoping for, but honestly, how can you not like this beautiful bird?

Chris and Aurora are night catching tonight. We are hoping for a Spotted sandpiper (Plettede mudderklire), but a more local bird would also be nice – and more realistic, of course.

Simon and Amelie had a successful day at Blåvand Observatory and caught enough Blackbirds (Solsort) to practice attaching GPS trackers to them. They will rejoin us tomorrow evening and can then train us in how to install the small “backpacks” on the birds when we catch them – now that will be exciting! We look forward to getting started on that project and seeing the results in a few months, after the data from the birds has been analyzed.

Ringmærkning (Kabeltromlen):

Bjergirisk – Twite: 1

Blåmejse - Blue tit: 4

Bogfinke – Chaffinch: 1

Dompap – Bullfinch: 7

Fuglekonge – Goldcrest: 7

Gærdesmutte – Wren: 5

Lille Gråsisken – Lesser redpoll: 2

Stor Gråsisken – Common redpoll: 1

Gulspurv – Yellowhammer: 1

Jernspurv – Dunnock: 1

Munk – Blackcap: 2

Musvit – Great tit: 6

Rødhals – Robin: 2

Rørspurv – Reed bunting: 1

Skægmejse – Bearded tit: 1

Solsort – Blackbird: 2

Sortmejse – Coal tit: 2

Total: 46

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

People: Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo, Chris Ketola, Oluf Lou, Martin Grienenberger, Knud Pederson, Amelie Zeller, Simon S. Christiansen, Christina Stinn, Jørgen Kabel + Igor, Jørgen + Karin