High Arctic sends its regards

Finally the wind quiet down to still stand, which meant it was finally time to go outside. I packed all my equipment and went for a walk along the shore, checking the sea for any interesting birds. After checking Kattegat with nothing to show for I finally arrived at Worlds End 3, first time I had been there since we closed down the standardised counting, as the weather had turned against us. Though I had hoped for some gulls roosting on the beach, to my disappointment there were none at all, so I turned my attention towards Skagerrak, where to my surprise roosted hundreds of melanittas and several eiders! For the seasoned sea birdwatcher, a sea full of melanitta-ducks is always fun as they can hold many fun species such as White-winged Scoter (Sibirisk/Amerikansk Fløjlsand), Surf Scoter (Brilleand) and Black Scoter (Amerikansk Sortand), so I started the process of slowly going through the many black and brown ducks bobbing around in the minimal waves the quiet weather offered.

It was nice as there for the first time immemorial the sun was shining and I could feel it warm me up a bit. But panning left and right along the shore offered nothing surprising, except aprox 200-300 Velvet Scoters (Fløjlsand), which is quite a high number for Skagen. After spending aproximately 1 1/2 hours at Worlds End 3, with nothing to show for, and seeing many more ducks deserving to be looked at further up the coast, I moved my OP on top of a tall dune west of the sandworm track, where you a nice vantage point towards NW. This particular dune is my prefered gull-checking dune as many of the gulls usually roost right in front of it, so you can sit down and relax while "gulling". Short after I had sat down, gulls started arriving and landing in front of the dune and suddenly a very nice adult Iceland Gull (Hvidvinget Måge) turned up! What a beaut. It landed near a small pond, where I tried to get some photos, but other gulls were constantly blocking it and before I knew it, they were flushed by two tourist, damnit.

Yeah, suboptimal, but the Iceland Gull is behind the young Herring Gull (Sølvmåge)

The gull landed out of view on the beach, so I decided to wait for it move again, while doing so two caspian gulls (Kaspisk Måge) joined the party. Had it been anywhere else in Denmark, an Iceland Gull and two caspian gulls would have been an absolute mindblower of a combo, but this isn't "anywhere else in Denmark", this is Skagen, so it had barely registered on the richter-scale. Though that would change quite quickly. The aforementioned ducks had been moving around a lot, so while the gulls were a nice distraction, my main goal was trying to find a rare duck and after panning through the hundreds of ducks 20-30 times, I started wondering if I should pack my stuff and head down to the Iceland Gull and try get some better photos, and just when I did my last check, I saw a strange duck with dark brown body, pale, mottled breast and brown head, with a yellow-rosa bill! I dove down and very quickly I went through my inner library of birds and the only one that fit was young male King Eider (Kongeederfugl)!

Though I have seen a handful of them on Faroe Islands and one adult male in Skagen before, I had never seen a young male before. It then resurfaced and it looked even more like one. Due to its behaviour it was hard to see anything definitive on, but I slowly piece together the puzzle and I called Simon and asked if had the time to join me as I had a possible King Eider 1k male. Sadly he didn't as he was in the process of painting his staircase, but instead we talked through the different field marks I had seen on the bird and slowly I reached the conclusion that it must be a 1k male King Eider! I called Knud, he said he could be out there in 30 minutes and then I called out my second Zello of the day. The rest of the time I just followed the King Eider while it swam around and foraged, in the process I accidently found a Great Northern Diver, whoopsie. Knud finally joined me and we managed to get some great documentation of this rarity! What a day and what a species, a new self-found tick of the rarest plumage recorded in Denmark.

Now why today post-title? The quick-witted would know that all the highlights of today are birds residing in high arctic/north pole, so let us hope that it will be a recurring theme, with birds from up there will drop by Skagen.

Yes, that is a Great Northern Diver, no I did not try to acquire any better photos

Prince Eider aka King Eider 1k male - a screengrab from Knud Pedersen's video

Highlights at the obs:

Velvet Scoter - Fløjlsand: minim. 200, a quite high count

Iceland Gull - Hvidvinget Måge 1 adult, probably the same one that Knud Pedersen found 8 days ago

Great Northern Diver - Islom 1 1k+, Skagen is the best place for this otherwise scarce species.

King Eider - Kongeederfugl 1 1k male, 11th record for Skagen of this species and fifth record of a king eider in this age/plumage in Denmark.

Link to today's observations from observers in the area

People at the station: Ragnar Smith, Simon S. Christiansen