Rødhals/ Robin

Ringing:

The day started very windy but the wind slowed a little bit down during the morning. As expected, this did not bring many birds. Today Grace went to the migration count again and Alix, who had arrived yesterday evening joined us in the ringing. We had quite many zero rounds or rounds with only one bird. The highlight was a female Goldcrest “Fuglekonge”, we did not have these in the last days.

Fuglekonge hun/ Goldcrest female

Moths caught today

Despite the strong wind during the night still 25 species in and around the traps. We had a few moths that are probably migratory moths. One was the Cotton Bollworm (Kriger Trækugle) which is a pest on cotton. In Denmark it predominantly found near the coasts. No cotton in Denmark but it can also survive on other plants, it is considered as one of the most polyphagous and cosmopolitan pest species according to Wikipedia. An other moth (much smaller) that is a migrant from the south (central and south Europe) is the Blastobasis phycidella (no English and no Danish name). This is a rather rare moth for Denmark only a few entries in both Arter or Naturbasen. Bornholm is a good place with a few numbers and two places in Lolland, one on Copenhagen and now also one in Falster. These two moths are the moths of the day (see pictures).

Cotton Bollworm (Kriger Trækugle)

Blastobasis phycidella

Migration: This morning was very windy, so instead of staying out on the exposed point, we moved to the side of the old building to shelter and stay warm. This meant our view of the ocean wasn’t as good and we had to be a little quicker while counting. We still managed to count 965 individuals of 33 species, which is good!

There were still low numbers of ducks migrating; however, we had some cool birds to make up for it. These included an Arctic Skua (Almindelig Kjove, Stercorarius parasiticus), a Long-tailed Skua (Lille Kjove, Stercorarius longicaudus), three Black-throated Divers (Sortstrubet Lom, Gavia arctica) and quite a few Bar-tailed Godwits (Lille Kobbersneppe, Limosa lapponica).

Notable migrating raptors today included Osprey (Fiskeørn, Pandion haliaetus), Honey Buzzards (Hvepsevåge, Pernis apivorus), and Hobbies (Lærkefalk, Falco subbuteo), which were all very nice to see.

Despite the wind and cloud, visibility was very good, and the sun eventually came out and warmed us up a little. We were again joined by five or so birders, which was nice. Hopefully tomorrow brings a few more ducks for us to look at.

At the station: Mads Elley, Grace Marsh, Alix Bortolussi, Robert Luttik and Hanelie Sidhu