A day of many tours

In the morning observation apart from the usual sightings a young bullfinch, Dompap (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) was observed flying over. Hopefully we will get a chance to ring it in the following weeks!

After observations we opened the nets in our garden in preparation for our weekly ringing tour in English. After a few words of encouragement on my side with the help of our trusty megaphone we had five participants lined up and ready for a tour! Mathilda, Oscar …. Since everyone on our tour (apart from me) was Danish, the tour was naturally in Dansk. I grabbed a few swoop nets and we were off. The group consisted of 2 kids and 3 adults and to be fair who doesn’t love a bit of swoop netting in the morning. Despite the hot weather we managed to catch a whitethroat thus providing our visitors the full ringing experience. Along the way we caught many dragonflies, mayflies and other insects in order to fully immerse the participants in the local fauna. Along the walk I noticed a peculiar looking insect, so I quickly swooped it up to take a closer look. To my utter joy and amazement, it was a scorpion fly (Mecoptera). Early Mecoptera may have played an important role in pollinating extinct species of gymnosperms before the evolution of other insect pollinators such as bees. Adults of modern species are overwhelmingly predators or consumers of dead organisms; they are the first insects to arrive at a cadaver, making them useful in forensic entomology.

On the way back we also came across an emperor moth caterpillar (Saturnia pavonia) which we took back to the observatory for educational purposes before returning it back to the origin of capture.

While sharing my awe and amazement of the caterpillar with the visitors in the courtyard I met a family from California who had some free time in Skagen as a part of their cruise. They were very keen to learn about the local flora & fauna so we set up an extra ringing tour, luckily Andreas had just started folding the nets. As a result of the late hour and hot weather we were unable to catch any avian dinosaurs however the arthropodan catch was once again bountiful. Upon returning to the station we opened the freezer to compensate for the lack of birds in the tour. In the end the family left with many fond memories and newly acquired knowledge about the natural world. After inputting some data from the past week in the digital archive we were ready for dinner. Heidi arrived and will be joining us for a couple of weeks, welcome Heidi!!! Another arrival in the late afternoon was Katherine Snell from the university of Copenhagen. She will be staying for a couple of days in order to mount a radio-telemetry receiver on one of the nearby radio towers which would allow us to detect tagged birds flying through the area – exciting stuff!!

In the evening we did our best to pack in early to make sure we're fresh as cucumbers for tomorrow's ringing session.

Ringing (Fyrhaven):

Tornsanger - 1

Total: 1

Folk: Simon S Christiansen, Martin Y. Georgiev, Christina Ninou, Anders Odd Wulff Nielsen, Erik Christophersen, Karen Klein, Peter Jensen, Mathilda Jensen, Oscar Jensen, Katherine Snell.