A mass exodus!

A mass exodus!

It’s a sad morning as it’s the day that Hanne, Daniel and Mark leave. Daniel and Hanne leave in the morning, but Mark still has a few hours before his flight so we manage to get a few tasks done. We take all the recycling (a lot of cans!) to the supermarket, and also manage to give the apartment a good clean.

On the way back from the recycling we visit the cormorant lake once again. Water rail numbers are no longer so high, but snipe numbers are at 86 individuals today! We also have a few spotted redshank, a male ruff, wood, green and common sandpipers. Stopping at North Strand, we see a hundred or so common scoter, the same group of velvet scoters and some red throated divers. We stop off at Batteriskoven to try and find some passerines and have some success. Mark sees his first Skagen icterine warbler, chiffchaff, spotted flycatcher and blue tit. Lots of activity in the wood today, I’ll be returning again tomorrow to see if I can catch any scarce migrants. Spotted flycatchers still feeding young, as were the icterine warblers.

Alas, 3.30 comes too soon, and the Obs is as much quieter place. Not for long though, as our new ambassador arrives late in the afternoon, and Troels and Katherine from Copenhagen are in the lab assembling parts for a radio transmitter, which will hopefully be used to monitor radio tagged birds moving through from Norway this autumn, fingers crossed.

I make a ratatouille and rice for dinner, and spend an hour or two introducing Charlotte to her tasks for the week, and the various other observatory necessities. Simon and I then spend an hour or two chatting about the autumn and next year, playing shuffleball (I won convincingly twice!) before I head to bed around 11pm.

Tree pipit

 Crested tit