Mosuitos and birds

As ancient ringer’s wisdom says: where there are mosquitos, there are birds. We had a lot of mosquitos today probably due to the changed weather conditions and we had quite a few birds too in the ringing. Since Alice, Nathan and Rita took today off in order to explore a natural area (Lille Vildmoos) further south, it was only me and Max at the ringing today. Luckily, we were helped out by former volunteer Frederik who is staying in Skagen on vacation at the moment with family. We had a couple net checks where we were quite happy to have his help! Like other days, today has been quite windy, however, over night the winds have turned from west to south which made everything just a little different.

We were not overwhelmed with birds nor were there any other species than what we are used to by now, save the robin (rødhals) which appeared in the nets to remind us that winter is not that far away.

We also had a juvenile bearded reedling (skægmejse) which was quite a treat, another one calling from the reeds. All of them are probably local birds, though. Migration is still very slow but the fact that we catch a lot of common whitethroats (tornsanger) and very few of them are ringed now also means that we can get a rather good impression of how big the population really has to be. And I am glad to announce that it is big. Of course, there are big variations between years but this year seems to be rather good for common whitethroat, as other years have been particularly good for blackcaps (munk). And Whitethroats are pretty, like this adult male shows:

Apart from birds it was a very nice morning in nice weather out at Kabeltromlen, hanging out with nice people, catching up with old friends and eating ‘rundstykker’, that a visitor kindly brought to introduce us to traditional Danish breakfast.

The rest of the crew had a fantastic day at the Lille Vildmoos and they managed to see moose which was one of their goals:

Local observations of the day in DOFBasen

Ringing at Kabeltromlen:

Solsort (Blackbird) 2

Rødhals (Robin) 1

Løvsanger (Willow Warbler) 2

Gransanger (Chiffchaff) 6

Rørsanger (Reed Warbler) 3

Kærsanger (Marsh Warbler) 2

Gulbug (Icterine Warbler) 1

Gærdesanger (Lesser Whitethroat) 1

Tornsanger (Common Whitethroat) 16

Munk (Blackcap) 6

Musvit (Great Tit) 2

Skægmejse (Bearded Reedling) 1

Rørspurv (Reed Bunting) 1

Total: 44

People:  Rita DeLucco, Alice Scalzo, Nathan Delmas, Max Laubstein, Martina Hillbrand, Frederik Johansen, and our guests Iben and Olivia.