Breaking the streak of good birding days

Hello everyone!

It's nice to be back at Skagen Fuglesation. For those who don't recognize me, I volunteered here at the observatory last year in June and July. I came back again after being told many stories of spring bird migration at Skagen. I arrived again just yesterday, and after spending almost 7 hours on trains from Copenhagen, I was so excited to be a part of ringing and observing operations at the bird station. Well, this morning for my first ringing session here this year, Hayley, Isis and I were greeted with a subpar morning of bird movement. We caught some nice things, such as Pied Flycatcher and Tree Pipit.

We caught 21 birds in total (19 ringed + 2 recaptured), but we were only able to ring until about 08:00. After that, the rain began and the wind slowly kept picking up until it became a danger to birds in the net, so we had to stop ringing.

Magnus and Simon didn't have much more luck than us, having seen more or less the same species as us and very few migrating birds. There was almost no point to the count, although even negative data helps!

Later, after most of the volunteers napped (except for me), Simon Gillings of the BTO gave us volunteers and a few birders of Skagen a lecture on the use of sound recordings and sonograms in bird counting and identification. He showed us how the BTO uses software they developed called Acoustic Pipeline to monitor certain bird populations and how he trains it to become more accurate. He also runs us through how Skagen Bird Station would use the software with our recorders we have in the field.

Ringing (Cable drum hub): 

Total: 19

Calling (Nordstjernevej)

Willow Warbler Leaf Warbler 1

Total: 2

Todays observations from observers in the area

Sum of observations of raptors on DOFbasen from today

 People: Seán Walsh, Hayley Land, Isis Khalil, Magnus Houen Lauritsen, Simon Kiesé, Simon S. Christiansen, and our guests Dorte and Anders Østerby.