Day of the Magic Show

Today was the day of the of the magic show. To that end, we were up and already finishing the preparations long before the first guests came. Whilst Gustav made his last minute preparations, I prepared the ringing lab, where he would bring the children after the show finished. So many redpolls still hanging around in the garden, so I wasn’t lacking for birds but the wind was strong so I just had the ground trap running. I needn’t have worried as I managed to get 7 birds from one round in the trap, there’s just that many redpolls around. Gustav brought a large group to the lab after the shows and he gave a good talk about what I was doing as I extracted and ringed the birds.

After the visitors left, Gustav and I continued to ring the last few redpolls and I was helping him to understand the techniques of ringing and the reasons behind them. Once the last bird was ringed, Gustav and Anine cleated up the magic show, whilst I got started with a slideshow presentation I’m due to give on Eagles Day on Sunday. Gustav and Anine went and did some much needed shopping in the afternoon and saw the four snow bunting on their way back from the town. The carrion crow was also hanging around the observatory during the afternoon, first time I’ve seen it since I’ve been back, but as it’s our common crow in Britain, I confess I didn’t look that hard for it! I had a brief bike ride in the evening, going over to look at the CES ringing site as I left last year before they did major tree clearing work there, and boy has it changed a lot! 

Tonight it was Gustav’s turn to make dinner, and after that the two of them made their way into town to get some treats for their last night here, and breakfast for tomorrow morning. I continued to work on the Eagles Day presentation and my pet project of fine tuning the Birders Club video.

Gustav‘s Magic Show was very well received today. 

The view from the boardwalk. When i was here last year, this was a view dominated by reeds and woodland.