Northern lights

Friday night Yehonatan and I went night-catching at Grenen. Although it had rained quite a lot and puddles were on the beach, we didn’t meet any birds for the first hour. But despite that, two other observations were fascinating: First, when arriving at the waters edge, every single of our steps stimulated microscopic algae to exhibit bioluminescence, i.e. emittance of a greenish glow. The species is most likely Noctiluca scintillans, a planktonic dinoflagellate. We tried to take pictures or a video of this phenomena, but without a good camera our attempts were futile. I have tried many times to take pictures of northern lights with my mobile back in Tromsø, but the crappy phone-camera never managed to get them, which now was true regarding the mareel as well.

Shortly after, when I looked to the skies, my jaw dropped. There were actually northern lights visible! Not very strong, but clearly the moving bands of aurora borealis, which I have seen so many times further north. We were getting excited, even though the aurora had basically no colour whatsoever and it was only visible towards the northern part of the sky. We called back to the station and Michael and Koen went out to Grenen parking and managed to see it as well. Unfortunately, nobody took pictures – I’m sure that a good camera would have managed to catch some colour. Later, I looked up the solar activity and disturbance of the earth’s magnetosphere during the time of our observation. The Kp index, which is a way to measure the energy input of the solar wind hitting earth, was up to 5+ on Friday night, indicating a geomagnetic storm. Only at around this value the northern lights can be seen at Skagen, so we got really lucky with being out at that time and having clear skies. To be honest, I would have not guessed that I would see the northern lights once more this year.

After all the excitement due to the special light from below and above, we managed to catch a first year red knot (islandsk ryle) at the tip of Grenen, too!

The next morning, the observatory’s team split up in two groups to ring in both Jenne’s Sø and Kabeltrommelkrattet. Henning, Michael, Simon, Judith and I went to Kabeltrommelkrattet after the rain in the morning stopped and were happy to not get wet afterwards. The ringing itself was average, but in the meanwhile to hen harriers (blå kærhøg) and at least one calling penduline tit (pungmejse) were indeed fine birds to observe.

Michael, Yehonatan, Koen and Laia unfortunately got really wet at Jenne’s Sø and had to come back to the station to switch into dry clothes. After the rain stopped, they however got many birds into their nets – mainly lesser redpolls (lille gråsisken), which were attracted by their own calls played from speakers.

Laia also found some commom toads (skrubtudse), which she was really happy about.

On the afternoon, Rita came by and provided us with apples, pomegranate, honey and chocolate in anticipation of the the next day Jewish New Year celebration. Yehonatan told us that it is a tradition to eat fish heads on that day, but we will see if that is going to happen. Apples, pomegranate and honey seems to be the better (and also traditional) alternative.

The afternoon was dominated by indoor work – Laia, Yehonatan and Judith were working on our radar, while Koen and I developed the protocol for night recordings further. I also sat down to prepare my talk about Svalbards avifauna for the next day.

Ringing (Kabeltrommelkrattet + Jennes Sø):                                       

Meadow Pipit – Engpiber – 1
Eurasian Blue Tit – Blåmejse – 13              
Eurasian Blackcap – Munk – 3
Great Tit – Musvit – 1
Common Chiffchaff – Gransanger – 4
Goldcrest – Fuglekonge – 4       
Eurasian Wren – Gærdesmutte – 4
Dunnock – Jernspurv – 3
European Robin – Rødhals – 5
Common Reed Bunting – Rørspurv – 3                                 
Common Blackbird – Solsort – 1              
Song Thrush – Sangdrossel – 1
Common Chaffinch – Bogfinke – 1
Eurasian Siskin – Grønsisken – 3              
Lesser Redpoll – Lille Gråsisken – 49

Total: 96

People: Yehonatan Ben Aroia, Christian Stolz, Judith Kloibhofer, Laia Soler Iglesias, Koen Stork, Simon S. Christiansen, Michael Fink, Michael Anker, Henning Ettrup, Rita Pate