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Observation: Holy s**t, today was (unexpectedly) amazing!

The wind has been pretty much the same the last couple of days, that being eastern and south-eastern winds. Now, eastern winds are, of course, nothing to complain about at Blåvand, as already clearly demonstrated by the huge number of passerines moving through lately. The thing is that changes in wind direction are just more exciting than constant wind from one direction, and I honestly expected that today would be decent, if slightly worse than yesterday… man, was I wrong!

The sunrise that met me at obs today. Credit Anton Ræbild Jensen.

Today at obs, it was just Henrik and I from the station, but I wasn’t worried, as whenever Henrik is at obs, we always document way more species. The day started at 7.15 with a beautiful sunrise and a couple of Common Scoters (Melanitta nigra) and Meadow Pipits (Anthus pratensis) moving as usual. However, at 07.32, a weird Tree Pipit-like (Anthus trivialis) bird flew past me, and Henrik asked me if I heard it. Apparently, it was an Olive-backed Pipit (Anthus hodgsoni), one of my bucket-list species for Blåvand, and I was already ecstatic about today's obs! What I didn’t know at that point was that we were just getting started, as just 40 minutes later another Olive-backed Pipit went right by, this time letting me hear it very clearly before disappearing south. 

And as if those two rarities weren’t enough, we also managed a Lapland Longspur (Calcarius lapponicus), two Pallid Harriers (Circus macrourus), and a Red-throated Pipit (Anthus cervinus). The Harriers gave us amazing views, and the Red-throated Pipit was especially amazing. It appeared right at eye level with a couple of Meadow Pipits and gave off two extremely clear and characteristic “PSEUI” calls so loud and sharp that they almost hurt our ears. The Red-throated Pipit is generally a difficult species to find, and this is the first in almost two years to be seen at the Huk.

One of the Pallid Harriers giving us excellent views on fly-by. Credit Anton Ræbild Jensen

By this point, you, the reader, might be convinced that today was all about rarities. Usually, obs is either a game of quality or quantity (sometimes neither), but today has proved that you can, apparently, have your cake and also eat it. What I mean, in short, is that while we had a sizeable amount of really good rarities today, we somehow also managed to get amazing numbers of migrating birds. The highlights include: 2380 Common Scoters, almost 7000 Chaffinces/Bramblings (Fringilla coelebs/F. montifringilla), 104 Common Snipes (Gallinago gallinago), 184 Red-throated Loons (Gavia stellata), close to 500 Greylag Geese (Anser anser), 450 Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), and so much more!

Possibly a docu-shot of one of the Olive-backed Pipits today. Credit Anton Ræbild Jensen.

This might genuinely be one of, if not the best, days of the fall season. I will, however, keep doing my best to top today. Maybe tomorrow might have the same potential as today - we will see…

Today's observations

At the station: Strummer Edwards, Mathilde Sif Eiby, Anton Ræbild Jensen, Storm Hauris Borum and Johan Them Steffensen