The Little Tern Fence is up !

Observations: 

Today, off the coast of Blavand, there was (quite) a bit of red-throated loon migration [rødstrubet lom], over 156! It's starting, it's starting...!
And at the end of our observations, we saw three magnificent common cranes [trane] flying by, really close to the beach and making their distinctive, lovely calls. Apparently, it was one of the rare occasions when you could see them up close in Blavand – we were so lucky! 

Todays observations can be seen here.

Ringing:

Today was a slow day for ringing. The most interesting of the morning was a female Greenfinch with an enormous tick. It is normal that we find parasites on birds, Dunnocks “Jernspurv” often have feather lice and many birds have ticks, often close to their bill or eyes. Some ticks also find their way to the neck of the bird, I think it is a good place for the tick, it is quite sheltered underneath the feathers and there is only a little chance that the birds get rid of it somehow. This tick profited a lot from that place, it was very large.

Tick on a Greenfinch/ Grønirisk. Picture by Hanelie

Tick after I took it off. Picture by Hanelie

I took it off and killed the horrible parasite, which had already taken a lot of blood from the Greenfinch. Later in the morning, the Eagle club came to the station, and luckily, after many empty nets, we could show them some birds.

Little Tern “Dværgterne” project:

In the meantime, Joseph, Jorn and the fence volunteers did hard physical work putting up the fence for protecting the breeding Little terns “Dværgterne”. But it is up now and looks quite promising!

John and Jorn putting up the fence. Picture by Joseph.

Putting up the electric fence against predators. Picture by Joseph.

After setting up the fence, Joseph managed to read some Little Tern rings. One of the Terns was ringed 2022 as chick here at Blåvands Huk and from ring readings we know that it returned at least 2024, 2025 and this year to Blåvand. We hope that it will have breeding sucess itself this year! 

This Little Tern/ Dværgterne was ringed here at Blåvandshuk in 2022. Picture by Kim.

At the station: Clara Delahaye, Jorn de Jong, Hanelie Sidhu, Henrik Bøhmer, Thomas Kristiansen, Joseph Stephan, Kim Fischer, the Little Tern fence volunteers and the Eagle Club