Redpoll City!

The nets were open early this morning (considering the time of year!) and we had the redpoll calls on. From an empty garden, within 30 minutes we had a net full of birds and Simon and I were busy through the morning after only three rounds with birds. It was a very educational morning for me as it’s been almost a year since I last handled redpolls and we had a couple of lesser redpolls (lillle gråsisken) amongst the horde of mealy that we were ringing. There were some interesting patterns of moult present, with a bird that had had an interrupted moult and therefore retained some old secondaries, which was the only one with that kind of issue amongst the 91 redpolls we handled. We also handled a couple of great tits, some greenfinch and a couple of yellowhammer. It was a very busy morning for only five species!

After we’d finally finished, Simon headed off to Aalborg, and I started the weekly clean of the apartment, falling back into the weekly routine. Once that was done, I started to work on the broken mist nets we have from last year. There’s a lot of them, and the issue is trying to find places to erect them for fixing, especially in Skagen where it’s so windy! Nevertheless I managed to find a reasonable place and fixed a few holes, though fewer than I’d have liked, before the wind picked up and the light started to die.

I’d managed to get the daily diary finished before the big bird morning started so once it was dark I busied myself with DofBasen entries, social media and a few observatory computer tasks. My plan for tomorrow is to find a more suitable and permanent place to fix the nets so I can really get going on that before the ringing season really takes off. There were a few birds present during the morning, but the only one I really noticed was a whooper swan that flew invisibly past, calling, during the morning.

Ringed birds                  Retraps

Mealy redpoll - 87           Great tit - 2

Lesser redpoll - 2            Mealy redpoll - 1

Redpoll sp - 2

Yellowhammer - 2

Greenfinch - 3

Lesser redpoll (lille gråsisken) 

Mealy redpoll (stor gråsisken)