Good seawatching

Before sunrise, Simon, Yehonatan and Judith went ringing in Kabeltrommelkrattet. It was a good morning with 34 birds, but only a few species (see list below) with dunnocks (jernspurv) being the no. 1 species today. The new net, that we installed yesterday, caught 5 birds – so it seems to be indeed at a good place.

In the meanwhile, Knud and I were doing migration counts at the outermost dune row of Grenen. We had a little less wind than yesterday, but with 11m/s it was still quite strong. Opposed to yesterday, many different seabirds came by in good numbers and we managed to pick out some specialities as well: One first year Mediterranean gull (sorthodet måge) flew along the beach, one shag (toppskarv) migrated not far out on the sea to the northwest and two long-tailed skuas (lille kjove) followed suite. When looking at rough numbers, gannets (sule) were dominating with 626 migrating northwest followed by over 550 common scoters (sortand) in different directions. 262 kittiwakes (ride), 92 great skuas (storkjove) and 63 fulmars (mallemuk) kept us busy counting as well. Later, Judith and Yehonatan joined us for the last hour of observation after they had finished ringing.

During noon, Simon had a guided tour back at the observatory for a group of hairdressers. Too bad, that Simon already cut Yehonatans hair yesterday... (it looks good, though!)

In the afternoon, a German journalist came for a visit to the Grey Lighthouse on his journey from Ribe to Skagen. Judith and I were showing him around our exhibition, the birder’s club and went also up the lighthouse with him. Now we are curious what he will write about us, but the article won’t be published before next year.

In the meanwhile, Yehonatan did some office work and managed to keep the number of unsorted pictures in our ever growing picture archive low!

Our daily swim is now starting to cost us quite an effort. On days like today, when we have plenty of action going on, we only have time in the late afternoon, when the air temperature has already dropped. The Kattegat has also gotten noticeable cooler since the middle of August. Still, we are determined to swim and with some exercise like running on the beach, we manage to get warm enough to spent several minutes swimming among the waves.

Ringing (Kabeltrommelkrattet, Grenen):

Common Chiffchaff – Gransanger - 6
Willow Warbler - Løvsanger (Song of Songs) - 1
Common Reed Bunting – Rørspurv - 2
Common Whitethroat - Tornsanger - 2
Eurasian Blackcap – Munk - 3  
Eurasian Blue Tit – Blåmejse - 1
Dunnock - Jernspurv - 7
European Robin - Rødhals - 6 
Eurasian Reed Warbler - Rørsanger - 6

Total: 34

People: Simon S. Christiansen, Yehonatan Ben Aroia, Christian Stolz, Judith Kloibhofer, Knud Pedersen, Anders Odd Wulff Nielsen, Anders & Agnethe.

Music: Wovenhand - Mosaic