The long-awaited eagle “ørn”

God aften

As usual, our day started with the observations at Grenen. Because Knud was taking a day off, we decided to combine all skills of the four of us.  In the meantime, Sarah-Lou was enjoying a quiet morning. Surprisingly, we discovered two dead harbour porpoises “marsvin” on our walk. It was a unique opportunity to observe them from nearby but luckily we saw them alive too, later this morning.

Once arrived at Grenen, the fog thwarted our migration count and we decided to take a look at the gulls. We studied the different moult cycles of the different species and tried to read colour rings. Unfortunately, we couldn’t read the rings because the birds were standing too deep into the water. I started to check the ducks on the sea and in no time, I found a female greater scaup “bjergand” migrating. Not much later, a long-tailed duck “havlit” was flying northeast with some scoters “sortand”. Although I was very happy with the observations, the others could only catch a glimpse of the birds.

After one hour, the fog started to disappear and we decided to start with the migration counts while Marion went back to the station to have some more rest. The birds were also happy the weather got better. We were treated to a group of 70 whooper swans “sangsvane” and several groups of goldeneyes “hvinand”. But it didn’t take long before we saw the highlight of today. A subadult (4cy) white-tailed eagle “Havørn” surprised all the gulls in the area and flew with heavy wing beats along our migration point. We were all ecstatic about seeing this giant. We were still recovering from this observation, but he came back already and found a nice spot on the beach. We called Marion and Sarah-Lou and they arrived right on time to see this giant.

When we walked back, the eagle came to say a final goodbye. Back at the station, we said goodbye to Sarah-lou who is going to an organic farm for her next adventure. We had a great lunch and then talked about the species we already saw and we hope to see. Marion used her afternoon to work on her Master thesis while the rest of us went to the cormorant lake.

Simon had another challenge planned out for us. We had to fix the camera that livestreams the cormorant colony. Therefore, we had to walk through the lake. Alice and Hanelie were brave enough to do it, while I was supporting them from the shore.

Once arrived, they noticed that Simon didn’t give them the right tools. We called our guardian angel, Marion, and she arrived with the right tools. Alice and Hanelie went back into the water and Marion and I left.

I fixed my cameratrap in the meantime and went to the grocery store to buy our guilty pleasure: cinnamon rolls!

In the evening we worked on our data while Alice made a delicious mushroom pasta. We had a quick evening meeting because today we had the ultimate worlds end 3 birding quiz! The three girls were extremely concentrated because they knew they could win a price.

The quiz resulted in an ex aequo between Alice and Marion but in the bonus question, Alice could recognize the goldeneye as first and won the grand prize: another bag of cinnamon rolls!

Now we are chilling a bit and preparing for our first migration count at Nordstrand. It is the first of the past days with good birding weather. We hope to see some new species again and get to know the area a bit better.

See you tomorrow

Robbe

People: Robbe Cool, Hanelie Sidhu, Alice Scalzo, Marion L'Huillier-Hunsinger, Elin and Jens Vrang, and Sarah-Lou.