Amphibians and Eagles

Today was another day for the CES ringing at Jennes Sø. This focusses on breeding birds so we catch fewer new birds and more recaptures. It gives us a chance to follow some individual birds over a longer period of time.  For example we had a blue tit (blåmejse), a pretty male, which has probably already finished breeding and has now started to moult its wing feathers. Males often start to moult earlier than females as females tend to have more work with the offspring (of course we do not want to draw any parallels here to the world of the humans).

We only ringed 10 birds today but we also had 6 recaptures, and although we had few birds at least we had some variety. And it was not hot as in the morning it was raining a little bit.

We also caught this beautiful tree pipit which was nice since normally we hear them sing all the time but we rarely catch them.

Also, since there were not that many birds, we got to study a few other animals too. The lake was full of tadpoles, some without legs and some already with legs. And on the grass dozens of tiny baby toads were hopping away from the water. A good chance to see the development of amphibians close up.

After the ringing we went home and while the girls slept Frederik went out to look for raptors and he was lucky enough to finally see the steppe eagle (steppeørn) he had always missed when it was here. Apparently it is the same bird that was here several days two weeks ago and then left. It was seen in Aalborg yesterday but after a short visit to the rest of Denmark decided to come back here. We can totally relate to that since here is just the best part of Denmark!

But not only did he see the steppe eagle but he was also lucky enough to see it right next to a lesser spotted eagle (lille skrigeørn) which is a very rare but wonderful opportunity to compare the two species.

In the afternoon first we had a visit from Martin, who works for Swarowski in Denmark and brought us a brand new pair of digital binoculars which we get to test over the next few weeks. We are really excited to see how they work and will report once we get a good impression!

After that we all went to Grenen in order to move a net to a different place and we also set up another net, so now we have a total of 23 nets out there. The new location is also more in the reeds so we might catch different species there. Tomorrow we will get to test it!

Ringing Jennes Sø:

Skovpiber – Tree Pipit – 1

Blåmejse – Blue Tit - 1

Gærdesmutte – Wren – 1

Gulbug – Icterine Warbler – 1

Solsort – Blackbird - 2

Munk – Blackcap – 2

Rødhals – Robin – 1

Gransanger – Chiffchaff -1

Total:10

People : Martina Hillbrand, Frederik R. Johansen and Amandine Doré

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