A great northern diver at Blåvand !

Observation : 

Under the Blåvand sun, there’s no more sign of fog at the moment… and the sunrise brings its own share of enchantment…

Today was truly a beautiful day.
We spotted over 3,000 common scoters [sortand] migrating north, which really marks the start of the migration season – much to our delight.
Through our binoculars, we were also able to spot more than a dozen sandwich terns [splitterne], some velvet scoters [fløjsand] and a great northern diver [islom] resting on the waves.

Then, in the afternoon, during the count of resting birds, there was a massive number of herring gulls – over 800 of them – lying on the beach !

Todays observations can be seen here.


Ringing : 

Today we woke up rejuvenated to get ringing again after a couple of days of bad ringing weather. So when the sun slowly broke through and we were catching a nice amount of birds in the first few rounds. 

There were a lot of recaptures today but also some new arrivals, which were nice to see - some indications of spring with a chiffchaff (gransanger) and the highlight of today: the first black redstart (husrødstjert) of the spring. This was a younger one (2k), so the sex was not identifiable. 

Black redstart (husrødstjert). By Hanelie.

We also caught quite a number of blackbirds (solsort) and a couple of yellowhammers, a male and a female, that were ringed in different years - one last year in spring 2025 and one back in 2022, that were now flying together.

Later, we enjoyed the sun and blue skies over Blåvand today by a walk by the dunes and the beach. Another great day in Blåvand!

The lighthouse and "watercolour" clouds. By Mathilde


The ringed and recaptured birds of today:

Tomorrow will already be Mathilde’s last day... so tonight we’re planning to watch a documentary that’s sure to interest quite a few of you – it’s about birds nesting in the French Southern Antarctic Lands!
You can found it here in free-access : 
Le peuple des tempêtes - Les ailes du courage - Regarder le documentaire complet | ARTE
[it's in french but with english subtitles - enjoy the show!] 


At the station: Henrik Böhmer, Clara Delahaye, Mathilde Lundt Larsen and Hanelie Sidhu