Northern lights!

Today's blog post starts not with the morning activities, but with a highlight that happened earlier. And for that I have to backtrack for a moment.

At the beginning of this year, I realised for the first time that there was a chance of seeing auroras even in Germany. As a result, I read up on the forecasts and measurements and finally managed to photograph a faint aurora. I had stowed this knowledge away deep in my mind and dug it out again last night after I got the news from Germany about increased Kp values. It was shortly after 9 o'clock and after a long day we had already gone to sleep. As there was just a hole in the cloud cover, I sent the message to our fuglestation group, went out of bed in my pyjama and got my camera ready. Then the girls came out of their room, excited by the possibility to see an aurora. Together we went out. I walked the route barefoot. We could directly see a brightening in the starry sky, but only through the camera could we really see the colours. Then we walked on to block out the disturbing light sources. Now we could see it even better and suddenly a beamer of the aurora came too and was easily visible to the naked eye. Now the photos were also better and we took a few photos of ourselves in front of the aurora. What a great spectacle!

 aurora/Northern Lights at Skagen

The next morning we went to World's End 3 for the migration count. Due to the wind, we were unfortunately unable to ring.But we were able to see a Red-necked Grebe (Gråstrubet Lappedykker), two Great Skuas (Stor Kjove) and - again - some ducks. In contrast to yesterday, there were fewer Wigeons (Pibeand), but more Shovelers (Skeand). Afterwards, we fled from a big rain front, dried off and then set off for a very big shopping trip.

I went out to Grenen again and I could see some Kittiwakes (Ride) and Razorbills (Alk). Then we spent the entire afternoon checking sheets of the last week with Simon. After that we had a nice dinner (Gustav is the rice-man) and prepared for nightcatching.

People: Antonia Greil, Hayley Land, Rebecca Cheape, Gustav Nyberg, Simon Kiesé, Simon S. Christiansen, Knud Pedersen, Jette and Anders.

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