Wader x 4

Today was dominated by night catching. Later in the evening (yesterday) we set up the net on the beach and opened the net on the heath. When we did the first net check, to our delight a 1st cy Nightjar (Natravn) was hanging in the net and I was able to give him with a brand new ring. Since Hayley and Rebecca were supposed to leave for ringing the next morning, they went to sleep afterwards, while Gustav and I now ran the next round. And in contrast to last time, even with success in the beach net! As we stood together with Simon at the net to attach a new tensioning line, Gustav suddenly saw a Knut flying through the thermal imaging camera. It flew in our direction and straight into the net. "We've got a bird!" exclaimed Gustav. Very cool, especially that we now have a video of the bird flying into the net. You really rarely see that! As agreed, the girls were woken up for the ringing. There was a Stone Marten running around on the beach, and it even ate a dead Seal. I really wonder if this has been documented before? At some point, when we wanted to close the nets after unsuccessful rounds, there was another knot hanging in the net. And the next round, a third Red Knot and a Turnstone. What a cool surprise!

all pictures today by me :-) - Red Knot 1st cy

Look at this beautiful wing!

This allowed Simon to show us how to close steel rings properly and we were able to successfully apply what we had seen directly. Steel rings are more difficult to close than aluminium rings, but they are used for the birds' benefit as they last longer even in the harsh maritime conditions, as some waders can also grow quite old.

After this successful night, the girls left for Kabeltromlen with Simon. The first round was promising with 14 birds. After that it got a bit quieter and the birds seemed to have disappeared all at once. The most special bird was probably the Robin (Rødhals). Yeah, it is a very very common species, but I still miss it on my Denmark-List, that's funny hahaha. I'm now here for one month and I've seen many really good birds from Zitting Cisticola over White-billed Diver to Greenish Warbler but I still miss Robin.

Meanwhile, the migration count was just as quiet, no birds seemed to be migrating at all. However, as it was windless, it was very easy to spot even distant birds floating on the water. For this reason we saw Harbour porpoises almost continuously, sometimes very close and sometimes at a greater distance. Then suddenly a group of 6 (probably Bottlenose) Dolphins swam around a little further away - how cool! Probably the same animals that were seen the day before yesterday. What a cool observation and nice to see the dolphins compared to porpoises. Then even a Great Skua (Stor Kjove) and a Merlin (Dværgfalk) passed through and one Little Stint (Dværgryle) was between about 50 Dunlins (Almindelig Ryle) foraging.

Now, after 26 hours of bird stuff, Gustav and I got our well-deserved sleep, while Rebecca and Hayley took care of the remaining tasks and cleaned our flat. What a successful day, 5 birds last night is really good and was a lot of fun!

Turnstone (Stenvender) - 1st cy

Ringing  (Kabeltromlekrattet)

Chiffchaff (Gransanger) - 1

Garden Warbler (Havesanger) - 1

Blackcap (Munk) - 4

Reed Bunting (Rørspurv) - 1

Marsh Warbler (Kærsanger) - 1

Willow Warbler (Løvsanger) - 3

Reed Warbler (Rørsanger) - 4

Robin (Rødhals) - 1

Lesser Whitethroat (Gærdesanger) - 1

Total: 17

People: Hayley Land, Gustav Nyberg, Rebecca Cheape, Simon Kiesé, Bjørn Laursen, Simon S. Christiansen, Lisa Vergin, Stig og Grethe 

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