Lettuce begin the cleaning

Today the spring cleaning has begun, or winter cleaning to make it ready for the spring teams’ arrival in 2-3 months. But before we get to that part, we did some other stuff.

We all went to Skagen Harbour, with Emma, Mara and Thomas going to netto to get some bread for attracting gulls and me going out to the eastern pier. But on our way, I spotted two nature photographers walking slowly along the canal going through Batteriskoven. Apparently, they had spotted a Kingfisher (Isfugl)! A scarce winter visitor, but after a record autumn season, it isn’t the biggest surprise that we still have some hanging about in Skagen. Hopefully it will stay for me to get a nice photo-session. But we kept on our way. While they went on their merry way, I fought the wind and finally I stood at the eastern pier and there I spotted something that would be theme of today: Kittiwakes (Ride). While I stood there looking for the ever nonpresent Ross’s Gull (Rosenmåge) I had aprox. 350 kittiwakes migrating over the harbour in the strong northeasterlies. Otherwise, two snow buntings (Snespurv) were finding shelter in the rocks, when I saw a swarm of gulls hanging about Havnevagtkontoret, which was a sign that the others had reached the harbour, so I went on my way towards where I joined them looking at the many gulls. While standing there I saw a passerine fly towards us, and it didn’t look like a pipit! I quickly walked towards the spot it had landed at, but to my deep sorrow it was a flock of house sparrows (Gråspurv), not a crazy rare siberian passerine, lost in Europe.

Me (Ragnar) being completely devasted by the relevation that the passerine I saw turned out to just being six House Sparrows. Absolutely bambozzled, duped, deceived and last but not least, hoodwinked

After looking at gulls, colour-rings and a Razorbill (Alk) we went to the last spot in the harbour that could result in a fun bird, at the southern part of the harbour and western pier. I set up the scope in the cover of a shed and looked towards southwest and as far as the eye could see, kittiwakes, kittiwakes and kittiwakes. If I had sat at Worlds End 3 I could probably have clicked a four, if not five digit amount of kittiwakes. But now I was standing in Skagen Harbour and watched them fly by in flocks of 10, 20, 30 and even 40 over the harbour, what a sight. But we kept on cracking and saw a further amount of 5 Rock Pipits (Skærpiber), some gannets (Sule) and even more gulls.

Norwegian ringed Greater Black-backed Gull (Svartbag) 1k - black ring with starting letter "J" 99,99% of the time indicates its from Norway

We finally had enough of standing in 12 m/s northeasterly winds and went towards a bakery that Thomas knew about for some cake and coffee. There we had a well-deserved cake and coffee and enjoyed the shelter from the wind, but it was, as most other things in life, temporary and we got back on the bikes before going to Lidl and then the observatory as the cleaning was waiting for us. When we came back, we immediately started! The first place to be cleaned were the attic and the laboratory, not as bad as one might imagine, and we got help from a special little fella.

He shall be named... Jimbo

Simon came by for the evening meeting and to help set up a game plan for the cleaning as we have 1-2 days to finish the cleaning before the rest of the volunteers leave.

Now its late in the evening, sun rise is at around 0840 and the temperatures are in the single-digits, a stark contrast to when I arrived in July were sunrise was 0420 and t-shirt was mandatory wear if you were to stay outside the whole day.

Link to today's observations from observers in the area