The ringing: 

The sunrise seen from the station

It felt a bit like a cold turkey today: - after 3 days with over 150 birds per day, having to "settle" for around 60. Perhaps a luxury problem when compared to the numbers from before I arrived.

The wind had shifted to the SE, - not the most optimal wind direction for ringing here in the autumn in Gedser. The wind had also increased a little bit in meters per second and we left one net closed, as falling leaves would be an annoying problem.

It was clear that the finch migration has started. More than 1000 of them migrated into the garden, but we only rarely see them in the nets.
Once again today it was the Goldcrests (Fuglekonger) that clearly outnumbered them, - both among the newcomers and among those we got as recaptures.

 Also a red-capped among the recaptures

We felt that 4 ringers had far too little to do, so we got some of the work done.

Data checks, the ever-recurring piece of work was carried out, the department for discarded nets was cleaned up and some net repair and replacement was done.

 A Treecreeper (træløber) got in the net towards the end and there was a nerd outing about all the characteristics that need to be kept in mind in order to distinguish it from the Short Toed.

Dinner is calling: unfortunately not many pictures from the day

The migration on the Odden: The migration of the Eiders (Somateria mollissima) is the largest and most spectacular at Gedser Odde. The autumn migration started on Wednesday with 1,200 birds and continued strongly on Thursday with 8,000 birds during our five standard hours. 94 per cent of them were black and white males. We also had a good number of Wigeons (Mareca penelope) with just over 1,700 and Teals (Anas crecca) with just over 750. They often came in mixed flocks with other swimming ducks such as Pintail (Anas acuta) and Shovelers (Spatula clypaeta), so it was a cloudy, cold and rather busy morning.

There are often several species in the flocks of ducks over the sea, and it can be a bit of a challenge to both count them and include all species. Here there are black and white male eiders, brown female eiders/young, Pipit ducks with white bellies and Teal - the two smallest ones at the bottom right of the picture. Photo: Ole Friis Larsen/GFU

Fortunately, there were two of us when Michael Grell, who has a lot of experience with the migration at Odden, came and helped count both the small bird migration and the sea migration. It is often impossible to cover it all because the birds come from different directions, and at one point, hundreds of finches came along the hedgerow towards the tip. In particular, Michael registered over 5,200 Chaffinches and Bramblings (Fringilla coelebs, Fringilla montifringilla), which often fly in mixed flocks, but also almost 600 Linnets (Linaria canabina) and 520 Siskins (Spinus spinus) contributed well to today's intensive migration.

Eider in the morning light on Thursday. The big migration came as a bit of a surprise, and that only made it more festive. As the graphic from the Trektellen database shows with red bars, the migration has so far been below the average curve for the past many years. The migration of the past two days has been much more intensive and is underway a week earlier than it started last year (green bars). The graphic shows the average number of Eiders per hour during the hours we are out on Odden. Photo: Ole Friis Larsen/GFU

There weren't many birds of prey, but that's probably not to be expected on days with easterly winds pushing them further west towards Hyllekrog on Lolland. The migration of Cranes (Grus grus) remained with the two that we saw flying out over the sea just after sunrise.

See all of today's observations from Gedser Odde in the DOF database.

Moths : No new moths species today, Lithophane ornithopus was on the wall again, amazing that there are so many at the moment but maybe also a "recapture" of one of the last days. I will put a picture of Agrochola lychnidis "Foranderlig jordfarveugle". Is is a quite nice moth I think.

Agrochola lychnidis "Foranderlig jordfarveugle"

People at the station: Hanelie Sidhu, Grace Marsh, Hans Lind, Vagn Lind, Ole Friis Larsen