It was raining this morning, so the trap wasn’t set nor the nets opened. This allowed me to continue getting ready for my presentation at the weekend, and catch up with diary updates. It’s also cleaning day (should have been yesterday, but with people in and out I made a decision to do it today). I took a brief walk along the beach, seeing my first Danish razorbill, rock pipit and red breasted merganser for the year. I also worked out the logistics for the presentation on Sunday. 

The Eagles day presentation was finished by midday, give or take some extra information I received later in the day, and the apartment was cleaned. I went for a trip to North Strand and managed to catch up with another group of snow bunting (there’s at least seven different individuals I’ve encountered, and I’m sure many more if I did a full walk from North Strand back to the Observatory via the beach). I also saw my first Danish Sparrowhawk of the year.

Once I returned I was back onto the net repairs. As usual I lost track of time whilst repairing some particularly big holes, and I didn’t finish until almost 8pm. I may try opening the nets tomorrow, as the rain might have brought some things in.

Razorbill (Alk) one of three in Kattergat from the Obs today.

Eider (Ederfugl), a nice comparison of an adult male and a subadult male. 

A late start this morning, followed by a bit of computer work. The wind changed direction and dropped entirely so the garden was devoid of birds, frustrating my ideas of ringing this morning. That being said,  its very interesting to see such weather dependent movement. I caught up with a few bits and pieces, and then went back to net repair. Gustav went for a bit of a walk up to Ellekrattet and found a nuthatch there and a kittiwake from the beach.

Anine left about midday, and Gustav and I had a nice pancake lunch, after which I tried to find his nuthatch again to no avail. There’s a lot of change happening on the point, with a lot of woodland disappearing, so it’s quite noisy and not conducive to great birding, though I know it’s for a good reason. I did see a kestrel on my way back, which was my first for Denmark this year so it wasn’t a bad walk. Gustav left mid afternoon, and I went back to fixing nets, managing to get two out of the way today, so I’m starting to get into a rhythm. Once again it went on for longer than I thought, and I didn’t finish until it was dark outside.

Dinner was leftovers, and just going over my plans for the next day, cleaning the accommodation and cracking on with my various presentations, leaving enough time to go birding if I can. .

Gustav and his glamorous assistant, celebrating another good magic show . . 

Today was the day of the of the magic show. To that end, we were up and already finishing the preparations long before the first guests came. Whilst Gustav made his last minute preparations, I prepared the ringing lab, where he would bring the children after the show finished. So many redpolls still hanging around in the garden, so I wasn’t lacking for birds but the wind was strong so I just had the ground trap running. I needn’t have worried as I managed to get 7 birds from one round in the trap, there’s just that many redpolls around. Gustav brought a large group to the lab after the shows and he gave a good talk about what I was doing as I extracted and ringed the birds.

After the visitors left, Gustav and I continued to ring the last few redpolls and I was helping him to understand the techniques of ringing and the reasons behind them. Once the last bird was ringed, Gustav and Anine cleated up the magic show, whilst I got started with a slideshow presentation I’m due to give on Eagles Day on Sunday. Gustav and Anine went and did some much needed shopping in the afternoon and saw the four snow bunting on their way back from the town. The carrion crow was also hanging around the observatory during the afternoon, first time I’ve seen it since I’ve been back, but as it’s our common crow in Britain, I confess I didn’t look that hard for it! I had a brief bike ride in the evening, going over to look at the CES ringing site as I left last year before they did major tree clearing work there, and boy has it changed a lot! 

Tonight it was Gustav’s turn to make dinner, and after that the two of them made their way into town to get some treats for their last night here, and breakfast for tomorrow morning. I continued to work on the Eagles Day presentation and my pet project of fine tuning the Birders Club video.

Gustav‘s Magic Show was very well received today. 

The view from the boardwalk. When i was here last year, this was a view dominated by reeds and woodland.

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.

Vi startede dagen med en stor omelet. På gåturen ud til Grenen var ugens snefald så småt ved at være tøet helt væk, og nu var strandens fine sand atter blottet. Bølgerne stod højt i dag. De forbitrækkende sortænder blev skiftevis skjult og så frit fremme igen bag de store bølgevægge. Sulerne var der også gang i. Da vi kom op på klitrækken, hvor vi ville tilbringe de næste par timers tid, sad Rolf på sin arla-mælkekasse. Der var stiv kuling lige i snotten på os, så teleskoperne rystede. Store flokke af alkefugle trak NØ, og det var tydligt at de også kæmpede med den hårde vind. Dagen gav også en del rødlommer, som fløj forbi helt tæt ved kysten. Pludselig kom sneen dryssende ned fra himlen. Vindstyrken speedede snefnuggende op på næsten 100km/t, og når først du bliver ramt i pupillen af sådan én, kan du godt snuppe en kop kaffe, for du kommer ikke til at kunne kigge i skopet det næste stykke tid.

Selv Rolf smuttede tidligt på grund af sneen. Efter et par timer gav vi den forreste klitrække ved Grenensøen et forsøg. Måske der kunne sidde en lapværling mellem sand-hjælmene? En snespurv hoppede frem et par meter foran os, men ingen lapværling. ”Zry-zry zry-zry” lød det inde fra sivene. Bjergpiberne fløj frem og tilbage over Grenensøen, så lidt var der da at kigge på.

Hjemme på stationen igen skulle der gøres rent. Køleskabet fik også en tur. Nu skal der laves risotto med portobellosvampe og rejer. I aften er vores sidste aften her på stationen. Vi vil gerne sige mange tak til Simon fordi vi måtte tilbringe den sidste uges tid her på SFS. Selvom det ikke har vrimlet med sjældenheder, har vi i den grad nydt at være her. Det har nærmest været en lille miniferie for os langt væk fra København, hvor vi bor til dagligt. Der er noget helt specielt over fuglestationen og Skagens ro. Vinden der rusker en i kinderne, bølgernes brusen og hyggen ved at bo i den gamle stationsbygning giver os kun lyst til at komme igen en dag.

Til dig som læser denne dagbog, vil vi bare ønske en fortsat dejlig dag. Vi håber at du en skønne dag får krydset det hul du mangler, og du i morgen tidlig får dosseret den helt rigtige mængde kaffe og vand i kaffemaskinen. Der opstår bare noget magisk når man rammer den perfekte dossering. Så er det som om at alting går op i en højere enhed. Livet skal nok flaske sig til sidst. Selvom sovsen skiller, så smid et par isterninger i og rør lidt rundt igen.

Ha’ det godt så længe!

Folk: Emma Sohnemann og Joshua Haahr