Rain & a Marten

Today saw heavy rain over Skagen for most of the day. At the station, we continued working on our admin tasks including, checking the entry of our migration counts from the Spring, as well as finishing our raptor summaries where each day we summarise the birds of prey migrating over Skagen.

Michael headed into town to shop for dinner whilst Lauren headed up to the kiosk in the car park to seek permission for check the Landsvale (Barn Swallow) and Bysvale (House Martin) nests on the rafters of the building. The staff are kindly allowing us to monitor the nests and we look forward to counting the nests and determining whether they are on eggs or chicks on a drier day!

Landsvale (Barn Swallow) caught earlier this Spring at Kabeltromlen.

Dante headed out birding round Ellekrattet, World’s End, and the beach, although he unfortunately timed it poorly and wasn’t out long until it started to pour it down even more! Despite the poor conditions, he saw 3 Rødrygget Tornskade (Red-backed Shrikes), the 2 juvenile Sortstrubet Bynkefugle (Common Stonechat), 1 Bjergvipstjert (Grey Wagtail) as well as plenty of gulls on the beach to scan through. The undoubted highlight of his outing, which the rest of us were rather jealous of, was a Beech Marten crashing through the undergrowth and climbing trees just to the north of World’s End! 

The rest of the afternoon was spent learning to make ‘Domada’- a classic Gambian dish which Michael has made for us during his stay here and, since he will be leaving the station next week, we felt we needed to learn how to make it ourselves!

A full list of today's observations can be found here.

Skagen Fuglestation: Michael Colley, Zach Pannifer, Dante Shepherd, Lauren Evans, Jesper & Anna.