A sixth for Skagen

Today was our chosen CES day (for weather reasons if nowt else) so we were up at 3.30 to get started. The first few rounds were pretty steady, we had some interesting birds and some interesting wildlife alongside it, a water vole carrying its young from one end of the lake to the other right underneath us as we were ringing was pretty cool. Dragonflies were out in force and and more than a few around the nets allowing for some good photo opportunities.

However, the best photo opportunity came towards the end of the CES, when the raptors were moving. After being asked to try and photograph some putative black kites (they weren’t) Michele started to get excited and said, ‘it’s the white falcon, the white falcon!’. After some amusing misunderstanding, where I thought I was going to see my first (very out of season) gyrfalcon, it turned out to be a BLACK WINGED KITE! Thankfully I managed to snatch a couple of photos of the bird, fortuitously it seems as no one else seemed to catch up with the bird. Sadly we had to got back to finish the CES, but we only had a couple of rounds more. When we finished and got back to the observatory I bought everyone a drink, to celebrate Michele’s find, a world lifer for him and a Danish lifer for Preben and I.

After some much needed sleep, Michele went into town for a haircut, Preben went for a walk up to Grenen and I rode off to the cormorant colony. The colony is still bustling but very few nests are now occupied, most of the birds are in the water or on branches in the water. The monitoring project is drawing to a close. Whilst we were all away, another guest arrived, Aase, just in time for dinner! Michele cooked a mushroom pasta which was as tasty as usual. After dinner, most of us went to bed early to prepare for going to Grenen tomorrow, but I had to stay up to welcome our next guests, Mark and his son.

Black winged kite.

Male ruddy darter