The first kites

Hej everyone!

my name is Mira and this is my first time here in Skagen, so everything is still new to me at this point and every time I go out I’m overwhelmed by the fantastic landscapes. Something that is also new to me is the amount of sea birds you can see here and also the distance in which you can observe them. This I realized when we started the day with four hours of morning observation at the Nordstrand with Knud. It was still quiet windy, but we saw some long-tailed ducks (Havlit), a white tailed eagle (Havørn) and one shag (Topskarv), from which Knud could say that it was an adult, while I only saw a dark bird at the horizon, heading to the west.

After the observation we went to Kabeltrommlen and checked the situation around there and then we went to the end of the tractor track to look for gulls. We didn’t find the Iceland gull (Hvidvinget måge) we were hoping for, but we saw an 2 calendar year Caspian gull (Kaspese måge), sitting in the front row of a flock of gulls and two Red kites (Rød Glente), which were the first Red kites in Skagen this year.

In the afternoon we went grocery shopping, but we wouldn’t be birding obsessed people, if we wouldn’t have used that to look for the Iceland gull (Hvidvinget måge) in the harbour, but even if we probably looked at nearly every gull, there were no white wingtips in sight. But we will continue our hunt in the next days.

The last two hours of daylight (I would’ve loved to write sunlight, but the fog didn’t disappear the whole day) we spend with a little walk along the beach and the dunes around World end 1. 

Today’s observations in Dofbasen from observers in the area

Sum of the raptors in the area based on observations typed into Dofbasen the same day

People: James Wareing, Johanna Veentjer, Simon Kiesé, Magnus Houen Lauritsen, Knud Pedersen, Mira Kieckbusch