BioBlitz and power outage

Today I was the only one going out for bird observations at the northernmost point of Denmark. The weather forecast yesterday evening was rather bad, but I woke up at 5 am and checked the weather radar to get updated information. To my surprise and pleasure the rain would stop in ca. 1 hour! I quickly made coffee and found some food in the kitchen to get ready. During the night there had been quite a storm, so I decided to do the observations from the outermost dune chain to be able to spot waders resting in the ponds created by the nightly rain on the beach. Good numbers of waders were then indeed foraging in the little ponds, with a bar-tailed godwit (lille kobbersneppe) being the rarest species that morning. Dunlins (almindelig ryle) and sanderlings (sandløber) were present as the most numerous species. In addition, up to 11 teals (krikkand) used the beach ponds as well.

1st calender year red knots (islandsk ryle) foraging on the beach

In the afternoon I joined Martin, Judith and Joost for a BioBlitz-event at the observatory. In those biodiversity events, participants try to find as many species within a given time period as possible. For one hour, two families and an observatory team were now trying to collect as many different animal species around the grey lighthouse. Among the animals (or animal parts) found were a fox skull, a mallard (gråand) pelvis, many insects like beetles, dragonflies, hoverflies, true flies, grasshoppers and crickets but also crustaceans, spiders and gastropods. The family teams crushed our observatory team which came on a disappointing last place. The BioBlitz was a really nice experience and seeing a younger generation discovering the biodiversity of life just in front of their house doors was just awesome.

Around 3:30 pm we suddenly experienced a power outage; a quick call gave the information that electricity should be restored by 5 pm. This however did not happen, and we had to wait until after 8 pm to get the power back. The energy company had to bring out a generator to the parking at the observatory to provide us with electricity again. Currently the source of the initial problem is unknown, but it might be related to the storm in the night.

Without any electricity, we couldn’t perform some of our usual activities like using the bird radar or punching data. Instead we went swimming in the sea – which was rather cold today. Our shower water unfortunately joined the fun, as warm water is generated by electric heating, so the shower after the swim was even colder than the bath in the sea.

Cooking is also difficult without electricity, so we had a nice bbq instead. “Good that the electricity went off, otherwise we wouldn’t have this awesome food”, Joost said looking at Martin, who would have been the kitchen chef and responsible for dinner tonight…

People: Simon S. Christiansen, Martin Yordanov Georgiev, Yehonatan Ben Aroia, Christian Stolz, Joost Van Duppen, Judith Kloibhofer

Writing music: Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here