Fishing for an eagle

Morgen observation

The weather for the morning observation was nice and sunny, with some clouds. The wind came from the southeast at 9 m/s and we were hoping for an Osprey (fiskeørn). When we don’t have guests at the station, we use the “guest” space on our weekly planner for birds we hope to see that day, and today that bird was an osprey. Anders Myhrtue showed up at around 07:30 and lo and behold! He told us that there was an osprey in the area, and it was actually right in front of us, not even a binocular needed. That’s what happens when you spend too much time looking at the waders…The osprey was being chased by a very brave arctic skua (almindelig kjove). A little later Bent Jakobsen also joined the morning observation, pointing out a lot of raptors, which brought the total to nine sparrow hawks (spurvehøg), seven kestrels (tårnfalk), four marsh harrier (rørhøg), a white-tailed eagle (havørn) and a buzzard (musvåge)! A wonderful day for raptor watching

- The osprey made us so excited that we forgot to grab a picture, so here is a photo of Gustav with an osprey playing card instead

Besides the waves of raptors we also had a decent amount of waders. Most interesting was a total of 37 red-shanks (rødben), a quite decent amount. Furthermore we enjoyed more than 100 gannets fishing, which I think might have outfished some of the local cormorants.
After morning observation and the ringing we went picking sea buckthorns to make a vitamin shot. We made sea buckthorn juice, which is filled with vitamin A, C and E and rich in healthy fat. So now we are ready to brave the long and windy days! The words of our two nice morning observations travel fast. So this afternoon David Manstrup showed up at the station, to join us for the morning observation tomorrow. Henrik Will also be joining the observation, so we are looking forward to another great morning! We are secretly rooting for sheerwaters (skråper). - GBJ and SDP

Ringmærkning

Der er desværre ikke det store at fortælle om fra dagens ringmærkning. Vindstyrken var på omkring 9 m/s, så vi måtte holde flere af nettene lukkede. Vi havde bare 4 nye fugle og en enkelt genfangst af vores egne, men på trods af det har vi haft en hyggelig dag i blæsevejret. Mellem runderne brugte vi tiden på at læse op på fældningsmønstrene for nogle de arter vi fanger for tiden; havesanger og gærdesanger blandt andet. På en af de sidste runder havde vi en ung rødstjert. Efter vi havde nogle unge rødstjert hanner den anden dag, var det oplagt at øve os på kønsbestemmelsen af den her, som vi kunne se var en hun.

I morgen ser vejrudsigten noget lignende ud den i dag, men vi krydser fingre for at der alligevel er nogle fugle der lægger vejen forbi os :)

Blåvand fuglestation i solopgang.

- Lise Mastrup

Folk på stationen: Sverre Dahl Porsgaard, Mathilde Lundt Larsen, Lua Koplin, Lise Mastrup, Bent Jakobsen, David Manstrup og Gustav Brandt Jelert