Long-tailed duck and the last Willow warbler

Today I went to open nets with Justine in the morning before sunrise and Augustin, Simon, Oluf and Gustav joined for the first round. Compared to the other days, we got a fair amount of birds, mostly Bearded tits (Skægmejse) and Blackcap (Munk), but the highlight of today was definitely the Willow warbler (Løvsanger), which is very late in the season.. most probably the last one.  But the day actually started last night when we caught a Long-tailed duck (Havlit) at Hirtshals øststrand, a female first calendar year which was the first for the station!

Robbie went observing with Knud and they saw a Woodcock (Skovsneppe), which was the second one by the team, on its way to migration. They also observed the highest number (76) of Snow buntings (Snespurv), a Peregrine falcon (Vandrefalk), as well as the first Water pipit of the season (Bjergpiber) which was very nice, and a Little gull (Dværgmåge). A Yellow-billed loon (Hvidnæbbet Lom) was also spotted today at World´s End 1. Today´s numbers were overall low but it was interesting to see the winter residents continue to arrive.

In the afternoon Augustin and I went for the Fulmar (Mallemuk) survey from Gamle Skagen and back to the lighthouse. Although we found many dead birds on the beach, none of them was a Fulmar but we will definitely keep performing the survey few more times until the end of the season. It was interesting to see that we keep finding several birds of the Alkid family, which strenghtens our belief that starvation is not over and that there is an urgent need to further investigate the causes of death in an internationally-joined effort.

Ringmærkning – Kabeltromlen

Blåmejse             5

Dompap               6

Dompap              2

Fuglekonge         1

Gærdesmutte    3

Grønsisken         1

Kvækerfinke       1

Løvsanger           1

Munk                 11

Rødhals               1

Rørspurv             1

Skægmejse         9

Sortmejse           1

Grand Total        43

Folk på stationen: Simon S. Christiansen, Augustin Sticksel, Rosalina Sø Leth-Nissen, Robbie Lawler, Angela Di Pumpo, Justine Costa, og Gustav Nyberg, Oluf.

Klik her for at se dagens observationer fra DOF basen af fugle i Skagen