Her på Blåvand's blog bringes korte nyheder i dagbogsformat om livet og hændelser på fuglestationen.
A day of perfect timing..
Vejr: direction - SV (221); speed - 4 m/s; cloud cover - 8/8; visibility - 18+ km; temperature - 17.6°C
Migration counts started slowly, but with a nice amount of terns and gulls perched on the beach. As water levels rose and military exercises didn't take place today, the perched gulls and terns were flashed and then left the beach, luckily we have counted them early enough (great timing!). Waders aswell as Common Scoters were low in number today, but a floating flock of about 850 Great Cormorants was nice to watch (and challenging to count). Oystercatchers reached up to nearly 1.000 birds with, on average, bigger flock sizes than the previous days of the week.
Ringing was extremely quiet today, and apparently there is not much to say besides than: better times are sure to come at some point :).
Ringmærkning: Common Whitethroat (1), Dunnock (1), Common Redstart (1), Willow Warbler (1). In total: 4 birds of 4 species.
After some anger on an unidentified juvenile harrier (which passed by just a bit to late to be identified properly), we finished our counting duties and immediately started off to Tipperne as fast as we could, as all of us were keen to seeing the interesting falcon spotted yesterday. Luckily enough, we arrived and had good flight views just before the bird disappeared again so... perfect timing. We then chose to change location and accidently stumbled across a Buff-Breasted Sandpiper (which we respotted after it has not been seen for a few days). These two birds surely are very hard to find in field within a few minutes so.. again, brilliant timing (and helped with seing over the harrier.. at least a bit).
A walk to the beach in the afternoon brought several species of waders into photo-distance (so stay tuned, we will post some nice ones in the following days) and revealed an Arctic Skua chasing Sandwich Terns closely to the beach (which was relatively packed with tourists today). Just after getting in, the rain started.
Finally, here is a nice picture, Sandra took to show that you don't necessarily have to see a bird to prove that one has been here:
See you very soon, Sandra & Christian