Of Birds and Friendship: A Heartwarming Day at Blaavand Birding Station

Despite the suboptimal weather conditions for birding, it was a very nice day!

Just as usual, we left the house right before the sun started to rise. Amanda, Merit and Strummer opened the mist nets and did the ringing today. Andreas, Louis and myself went to the beach, got cozy and did the daily observation of the seabird migrating.

The weather during the morning was cloudy and the wind came from the North-West, which averaged around 13 m/s, the killer corner. Therefore, we only saw a few birds today at the sea as well as at the station and the lighthouse garden. We saw 139 Oystercatchers (Strandskade), 6 Sanderlings (Sandlöber) and 6 Dunlings (Almindelig ryle) moving south. The Common scoters (Sortand) did not like the north western wind either so we only saw 35 of them migrating. Nevertheless we truly enjoyed ourself at the observation, besides having interesting conversations about the ecology and behavior of seabirds. Andreas and Louis taught me the basics of the Danish language so we also had some good laughs.

Afterwards we came back to the station, ate two delicious cakes from Bent and Merit and drank a lot of coffee together which was accompanied by our luscious vocals because Amanda had birthday. The mist nets were still open at that time and had caught in total a Lesser Whitethroat (Tornsanger), two Great Tits (Musvit), an Icterine Warbler (Gulbug) and almost a Wood Pidgeon (Ringdue), which Strummer has dreamed of ringing for weeks now. That was a big start in the right direction of achieving his goal, so everyone including Strummer is now more optimistic then ever.

Later that day some of the pioneers who have been at the ringing station joined us for dinner so Louis cooked an exceptionally good soup for everyone. They told us some fascinating stories from back in the day which was arguably the highlight of this Friday. All of us are looking forward to tomorrow, where we are going to celebrate the 60 year anniversary of our beloved station in Blaavand.

People on the station: Strummer Edwards, Joseph Stephan, Louis Poulsen, Andreas Pedersen, Merit Lenk, Jimmy Skat Hanse, Hans Meltofte, Thomas Kiörboe and Amanda Johannison.