Orcas and baby birds

The day started with high expectations as after a stormy few days and quite some rain today there was almost no wind and it was promising to be a real summer day – well, with the local humidity, 26 degrees is literally tropical weather.

The birds apparently also decided to take it easy on such a warm day and the only thing flying in the morning was hundreds of mosquitos. We went to Grenen early to open the nets but came back empty-handed from the first net check. Simon decided that the ringing was too boring and went to go sea-watching instead. We were in the middle of a not so bad net check when the phone was ringing and he called to say he could see orcas close to shore. Seeing that bird numbers were still low and you don’t get the chance to see orcas every day I told Taima to go to Simon and I did the birds on my own for that time. After ringing them, I tried to see the orcas from Kabeltrommeln and I did! Three of them suddenly came up out of the water and just after I saw another one. Simon also took a video through the scope that you can find on our Facebook page.

As for the ringing, very much like yesterday it did speed up later in the morning with lots of juvenile birds. While yesterday it was newly hatched lesser whitethroats (gærdesanger) we mainly caught, today we had several families of whitethroats (tornsanger). It is really good to see that all the effort the parents put into defending the territory pays off! In the meanwhile we are still waiting for the first juvenile reed warblers to stop by our nets. They have definitely been singing a lot too!

Jørgen and Igor hadn’t visited us for a while but they came today to see the orcas and to tell us that the dipper (vandstær) had actually been sleeping in their carport this night. I guess the habitat it chose might not be quite what it was looking for. We can only hope that it will find a spot where it feels more at home. It hasn’t been seen since so hopefully it already went to look for a more suitable habitat.

The warm weather was good for raptors, even though migration should be over by now, honey buzzards (hvpsevåge) are still moving about and we see them almost every day. Today some more than on other days and one had been sleeping just next to one of our nets. We flushed it on the first net check.

Lisbet and Bent already had to leave today since that had a family gathering to attend to. We hope to see you again next year! On Sunday our next guests will arrive.

Since this night looks clear we will go for nightjar catching tonight. Wish us luck – we will need it (maybe more so than the Danish football players)! We will write about our success or lack thereof tomorrow.

Ringmærkning (Kabeltrommeln):

Bogfinke 1

Gransanger 1

Kærsanger 1

Rørsanger 4

Gærdesanger 1

Tornsanger 13

Musvit 1

total: 22

Folk: Frank Osterberg, Martina Hillbrand, Taima Lorentzen, Simon S. Christiansen, Erik Christophersen, Jørgen Kabel and Igor.

Click here for today's bird observations around Skagen