Gannets Day and Common Terns

In the early morning, we went out for ringing at Grenen again. We saw huge flocks of siskins, finches and tits migrating during this morning. However, a flock of Coal Tits (Sortmejse) has flown into our nets, so we ringed more den 30 of them. Jørgen, his wife and their lovely dog Igor visited us at the ringing spot and told us, that there`s a Yellow Browed Warbler (Hvidbrynet Løvsanger) around the area, but we weren’t lucky enough to catch it.

Simon spent the morning with a 3 hour guided tour about Gannets (Sule). The Gannets were very close so it was nice to watch them while they were fishing. Cecile also joined the tour and drove home afterwards.

In the afternoon, there was another guided tour for a church group of Frederikshavn and Simon told them a lot about the history of the lighthouse, birds and some science projects.

After a nice dinner, we had a moult lesson with Simon and he explained us a lot about different moult strategies based on pictures we took from birds we ringed during the last days.

In the evening, the weather was quite rainy and windy – perfect conditions for night catching. Therefore, Daniel and I got dressed warm and (more or less) rainproof and went out to catch some birds and we didn`t come home empty-handed. We caught two Common Terns (Fjordterne) – the first ones who`ve been ringed here at the Bird Observatory! It wasn`t that easy to caught them and our wellies were full with water (so running/walking wasn`t that much fun…) but eventually we succeeded.

Birds we ringed this morning: 34 Coal Tits (Sortmejse), 9 Robins (Rødhals), 4 Reed Buntings (Rørspurv), 3 Chiffchaffs (Gransanger), 2 Blackcaps (Munk), 2 Redstarts (Rødstjert), 2 Great Tits (Musvit), 1 Chaffinch (Bogfinke), 1 Pied Flycatcher (Broget Fluesnapper), 1 Reed Warbler (Rørsanger), 1 Meadow Pipit (Engpiber), 1 Lesser Whitethroat (Gærdesanger), 1 Garden Warbler (Havesanger), 1 Goldcrest (Fuglekonge), 1 Willow Warbler (Løvsanger), 1 Dunnock (Jernspurv)

People: Simon S. Christiansen, Cecilie Kimose Feggé Dufresne, Sasha Munters, Molly Brown, Daniel Bloche and Lisa Vergin