Ringmærkningen: It was a windy morning around the tip, with a strong south-easterly breeze, so we decided to open only the most sheltered nets, which gave us 153 metres. In addition, the radar showed a large rainy cloud approaching us. We checked before each round to see when the cloud would arrive, but it was always delayed by around 15 minutes. In the end, we only got a few small snowflakes — lucky us!

Most of the birds we caught had been caughth the past few days, but we also caught a Robin (Rødhals) that had been ringed by Henrik on 6 February. We only ringed four birds, including the first Black redstart (Husrødstjert) of the season: a 2CY female. Now we're waiting for the common one as well ! The number of birds was good to give Mathilde time to ring every all of them and practise all the ageing criteria.

Black redstart (Husrødstjert), Foto : Théophile Fontaine

It was such a pleasure to be back here, four months after I left. Doing the rounds again, even though the garden looks terrible with all the recently cut trees. Nevertheless, it's almost like coming back home, or at least to a place I've missed ! 

Tomorrow it will be sunny and almost windless, so hopefully we will see the first Willow Warbler (Løvsanger) in the Chiffchaff (Gransanger) flocks. Alba has just arrived and will be here for a week — we're ready to ring all the spring diversity!

We have a lot of comings and goings this week at the station, with soon a brand new team of ringers !

Trækket på Odden: This morning was a really cold and windy one. Believe it or not, we even had some snowflakes ! Fortunately, we were able to admire the sunrise colours before the sun disappeared behind the dark clouds.

A dark but colorful sunrise. Picture by Cyann Ménard/GFU.

It seems that, just like us, the birds weren’t so keen to spend some time out at the tip today. We counted a total of only 378 birds, with once again a great species diversity. I hope they didn’t take the past days’ dynamic, being quieter each passing day, as a challenge to overcome or else we won't see a single migrating bird tomorrow !

Among the few spotted birds, the highlight of the day must be the Red-throated Divers (Rødstrubet Lom) flying southwards in good number, as well as a female-type Marsh Harrier (Rørhøg) braving the wind and the waves. We also had a long discussion about a single Grebe, hesitating between a Slavonian Grebe (Nordisk Lappedykker) and a Red-necked one (Gråstrubet Lappedykker). We eventually decided to keep up with the first impression, but the discussion process definitely made us learn some new species clues to look for next time.

Se alle dagens observationer ved Gedser Odde i DOFbasen.

Folk på stationen: Cyann Ménard, Mathilde Sif Eiby, Sjoerd van Baal, Théophile Fontaine, Mads Elley, Alba