‘Summer’ is here . .

The wind really picked up throughout the night, which meant ringing in the morning was not possible. Thankfully we had a group of schoolchildren arriving at 11 for a ringing tour, so heading to Grenen wasn’t realistic anyway. As we had time to spare, I went out to the coast at 9.30 to look for the goosander from the previous evening, which was swimming around the rocks on the beach, which was nice. It’s an unusual sighting at this time of year, but not unsurprising as the males don’t help in rearing the young, so coming down here to moult, where conditions are slightly more hospitable is a wise decision.

The ringing tour started at 11.30, though the wind didn’t provide much optimism for catching anything, However we were lucky and there was a whitethroat on the first round, and a lesser whitethroat on the second round. Showing the children how we ring birds with an actual bird was very gratifying, and they all seemed very interested. On top of that the whitethroat was a Danish retrap from elsewhere in Denmark. The weather really set in after that and we retreated inside to get one with various indoor tasks. It seems the ‘Skagen summer’ has finally arrived!

Birds ringed - 1 lesser whitethroat

Birds retrapped - 1 whitethroat