an amelanistic appearance

Today was the first day that Maxim and I could ring together without anyone else present, because yesterday I upgraded to a C-license, wich means I can ring without supervision, only with an experienced ringer in a range of 20 minutes. That person was Henrik, who did the morning observations. First he was looking at the migration, after that he searched the whole southern coast for birds. He saw among others a black tern, more than 1000 common or artic terns and a grey wagtail.

The ringing was slow. There weren't a lot of birds, but it wasn't to bad either. On one point, I said to Maxim after doing a short round through the lighthouse garden, let's grab something to eat, I am hungry! But when I arrived, I suddenly saw in one of the back net a big, grey bird. Wood pigeon! I sprinted towards it and was able to catch and ring it. Wile ringing the pigeon, Maxim was able to catch a starling and one of the wrynecks hanging around, great, but I was still hungry.

It slowed down fast and while Maxim worked on the computer, I continued the ringing. Just after Maxim left to do his work, I caugth my first crested tit, wich I was hoping for for the past week. On one point, I wanted to take out a willow warbler, when I suddenly heard something bigger was flapping its wings, I immediatly turned around and sprinted to the net, sparrowhawk! But before I was able to grab it, it was gone...

In between the rounds I walked around hoping to find something exciting. In the dunes I saw a sand lizard in front of me, but it wasn't the normal colour. I picked it up to check if it was really an alive sand lizard, and it was. This colour deviation is called amelanism, very cool to see!

At the end we caught 43 birds, 31 new and 12 controls.