Ringing Common Ringed Plover’s chicks !

This morning, Frederik and I went opening the nets and Fanny joined us some time later for the first round. The weather was lightly cloudy and quite windy. We caught very few birds in the first rounds, and even less in the last rounds, maybe because of the wind. We caught two Bullfinches (Dompap), one male and one female, probably a breeding pair. We saw flocks of Common crossbills (Lille korsnæb) flying around. Lars did observations and counts of the species seen while we were ringing.
 

Bullfinch (Dompap)

After the ringing session, Fanny and I went to check if eggs of previously known Common ringed plovers’ (Stor præstekrave) nests in Grenen beach had hatched, and we saw indeed some very young chicks running around with their parents. We decided to come back a bit later in the afternoon to catch the chicks and ring them. While ringing, the parents of the chicks were feigning having a broken wing (distraction display). This is a common strategy used by plovers to distract predators from attacking their chicks.  We ringed two clutches of ringed plover, the first one with 3 chicks, the second one with 2.

Female covering the chicks

A very young chick


Weighing of the chicks

We ended the day by a nice dinner in a restaurant of Skagen, and then some bird watching in the fields around the town. We were looking for Rosy’s starlings (Rosenstær) but only saw Common starlings (Stær).

Ringing (Kabeltromlekrattet & Grenen beach):

Bogfinke - 1
Dompap, Lille (ssp. europaea) - 1
Tornsanger - 2
Havesanger - 1
Munk - 2
Gærdesmutte - 2
Rørsanger- 1
Gulbug - 1
Rødhals - 2
Gærdesanger - 1
Kærsanger - 2
Stor Præstekrave – 5

Lars Bo Jacobsen, Simon S. Christiansen, Fanny Rey, Frederik R. Johansen and Amandine Doré

Klik her for at se dagens observationer indtastet i Dofbasen af observatører i området

Klik her for at se opsummeret observationer af rovfugle i Skagen