Back to work

After all those days with very adverse weather, we almost forgot, what it is like to work at Skagen Fuglestation: normally you are always busy and even when you are not you still have to decide whether you want to go out birding or catch up on sleep. Now, finally we’re getting into the daily rhythm again (of working night and day)!

Simon junior and Bjørn got up early this morning, along with Johanna, who has been a volunteer earlier this year and is now back on holidays with her family. In dire need of the “real Skagen experience” she asked if she could join us this morning, which we highly appreciated. I “slept in” until 5.30 and joined them, Knud, and Henrik a little later at World’s End 3, by which time I had already missed several hundreds of fulmars (mallemuk), a manx shearwater (almindelig skråpe) and three arctic skuas (almindelig kjove). So it seems that the day has been better than the last few days. Actually, the skuas had arrived on the beach last night. I got a nice picture of one of them through the scope, taken with the phone (so not as good as Simon’s pictures).

And here is how the morning looked, sunny and less windy, so actually a really nice morning out.

Unfortunately, the wind was still too strong for opening nets, but there were also some nice shorebirds to look at, on the beach, so I could have some fun too.

In the afternoon, Peter Kristensen came out again, to set up the new radio telemetry equipment with which we are hoping to record passing birds with telemetry tags on them. All of us helped together to build a setup for the solar panel and a fence to keep the cows away from our equipment.

Also, yesterday, as there were so many kittiwakes (ride) roosting on the beach, Knud and Simon managed to read quite a few rings. We reported them today, and, amazingly, already received an immediate answer from Kjeld Pedersen: some of them were ringed in 2015 and have not been reported since! The oldest was ringed in 2014, so is now 9 years old!

After the evening meeting, Bjørn finally showed off his amazing cooking skills (Sean, we found a replacement for you! Downside is, he’s only staying for 2 weeks). Now we try to get some sleep before we get up again at sunset (little vampire-like feeling) to set up the nets for the night catching Simon junior has been wishing for for days now. Johanna will come back to help us with that, so we can get some sleep before our next tasks in the morning.

It will also be Bjørn’s first “ringing” session, before he get’s to join me at the ringing at Kabeltromlen tomorrow morning. Due to the southerly winds, however, there will probably not be many birds, but that gives Bjørn the chance to slowly learn extracting the birds and recording all the measurements we take at the ringing.

There may be night catching again tomorrow night, if you are interested in coming, we will keep you updated on Facebook and Zello.

People: Peter Kristensen, Martina Hillbrand, Simon Kiesé, Bjørn Laursen, Simon S. Christiansen, Lisa Vergin, Karen and Henrik Toft

A link to today's observations from volunteers and local observers.