End of Skagen crisis

Coming to the end of the spring team's term, we're beginning to find it hard to occupy ourselves and decide what to do. If we go ringing, it turns out obscenely poor and we begin to question why we bothered to open nets. Like yesterday, I decided I would at least go out to count birds at Grenen; it may be the last chance I got to do that. 

Since I was already awake, I went out a little before sunrise, not really expecting anything, but I was rewarded with an early morning appearance of a Shag (Topskarv). This species is very rare in June, but their increasing population means increasing summer records. It has been the third Shag this June, two seen by me and one by Knud.

The rest of the count went by normally. There was one anomaly, an adult Herring Gull (Sølvmåge) that seemed to be melanistic (excess melanin pigment in its plumage) around most of its body.

Sparrowhawk (Spurvehøg) on Grenen Strand this morning

Later, while Isis was making dinner (amazing Shawarma), she happened to look outside the window and see a pigeon. While not an uncommon occurance in Skagen, seeing one huddled against the laboratory wall made it seem sick. So we went outside and hand caught it. It was tame, likely tired and hungry. It also had rings on it, to show that someone owed them. The rings showed that the bird, named Taurus, came from Sweden. Since it has lived all it's life in capitivity, making it as far as Skagen from Sweden was quite the feat. No wonder it was as tired as it was. We tried releasing the bird after checking it out, but it would not go far and allowed us to catch it again. We were very grateful when Knud came to pick the pigeon up to rehabilitate it.

And that's it. Lucas awaits the arrival of the new Autumn team, and the beginning of the Autumn ringing and observing season.

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

 Sum of observations of raptors on DOFbasen from today.

People: Isis Khalil, Seán Walsh, Lucas Corneliussen, Simon Kiesé, Knud Pedersen, Lars Bo and Simon S. Christiansen