Red Sky in the Morning...

With the unproductive birding weather of the month, we have been consoling ourselves that it is quality and not quantity that is important. Today we had neither. We were greeted at dawn by a magnificent red sunrise reflecting resplendently on the low tidal pools. I had the expression ‘red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning’ in mind, but I had never realised that the true meaning was advice for a shepherd’s birdwatching duties. We are joined at the moment by ten members of the Danish Rare Birds Committee, but even the added fire-power we could not flush out too much to report.  

Ringing numbers were low, but we did at least have three Little Gulls and a Black-throated Diver on the seawatch. Consolation has been provided though by contact with Skagen Bird Observatory, who are also reporting low numbers of birds for this time of year. If Skagen cannot uncover many birds, then what chance do we have!

We are hoping at the moment that the birds are stuck in a migratory blocked pipe somewhere south of here. Any day now, we are expecting/praying for that metaphorical pipe to burst and a veritable Garden of Eden to burst our way. Any day now…

Lisa and I were keen to add a bit of extra work to the committee’s list and so, with the seawatch complete, cycled to Skallingen to see what we could find. The highlight was a Bluethroat, which is the first one recorded by the observatory this year. Otherwise, it was still relatively quiet and I cannot blame the birds with temperatures starting the day around two degrees and rain hitting us at intermittent intervals, which were as unpredictable as they were unwelcome.

With birding war stories not readily available for dinner time conversation, we turned to philosophy instead. With an international mix, you could perhaps have expected the relative merits of Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Hobbes and Heidegger to be compared and contrasted. Once again, we birders demonstrated our broad range of interests and we digressed instead to what truly does make a bird sighting and the value (or lack of) of list-making. That the bird discussions have digressed onto the theoretical, perhaps shows were our minds are at now...

People at the Station: Maxim, James, Morten, David, Henrik and Lisa.