Sandwich Terns (Splitterne) counting in Northern Jutland !

Today, we went on a “road trip” around Northern Jutland to count Sandwich Terns (Splitterne) in different locations, for Lisa’s master thesis about post-breeding dispersal of this species. Victoria, Amelie and me went down south on the Eastern coast, while Lisa’s went counting on the Western coast. For the first time in a while, we went out of Skagen…. It felt like an adventure !

Goodbye Skagen !

We started our counts at Jerupstrand at 7am, and counted very few terns. This is the location where we are planning on catching terns on Sunday evening, and we hope there will be more terns ! Jerupstrand is a nice location to observe waders, and we saw some Curlews (Storspove), Oystercatchers (Strandskade), Dunlins (Almindelig ryle), Bar-tailed Godwits (Lille kobbersneppe), ….

Jerupstrand

We later on went down south to Sæby and counted around 30 individuals.

Saeby

Close to the parking lot, there was a reconstruction of a miniature Saeby, called “Minibyen Saeby ”.

Minibyen Saeby

The weather was very nice, sunny and warm and we were very happy to discover a bit more this region of Denmark ! The coastal cities are very charming, and we enjoyed driving through these landscapes.

After Sæby, we drove back north to Frederikshavn, and counted terns in the harbour…. Unfortunately, there was almost none of them… However, in Frederikshavn, we observed some nice species: a Spoonbill (Skestork), Golden plovers (Hjejle) transitioning to their winter plumage and a Curlew Sandpiper (Krumnæbbet ryle).

We then stopped at Strandby, where the bird activity was low but a lot of people were out on the beach !

Strandby

Next destination was the harbour of Aalbek, not far from Jerupstrand. Here again, we did not see any Sandwich terns…

However, we saw two Greater Black-backed Gulls (Svartbag) with color rings, that we’ve read, which made Viktoria very happy !

We ended up our little road trip in Skagen harbour, in which, once again, bird activity was very low… But this might be explained mostly by the time of the day: it was already late afternoon when we reached Skagen….

Skagen harbour

Even though we haven’t counted many terns, we have enjoyed very much this day travelling around Northern Jutland and do some bird-watching !

Lisa was more successful on her side and counted up to 118 Sandwich terns in one location !

People: Amandine Doré, Viktoria Mader, Lisa Vergin, Simon S. Christiansen, Amelie Zeller, Kirsten

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