Ringmærkningen: After a day with closed nets, we were very excited to ring again this morning. The morning wind still took our expectations down a notch, and during breakfast we each guessed 56 and 66 birds (me more optimistic than Théo, as usual). We finished with 61 birds, so we're happy with the team average. 

We had hoped to catch the Pied Flycatcher (Broget Fluesnapper) and the Wood Warbler (Skovsanger), that have been in the garden since Sunday afternoon, but we sadly haven't seen them today.
The good news is that we caught the first Lesser Whitethroat (Gærdesanger) of the season! Since Théo swore we'd have plenty in the future, I didn't get to ring it yet though. To make it up to me, he kept quiet about a Goldfinch (Stillits), until I pulled it out of the bag, and could add that to my ringing species list instead!

Lesser Whitethroat. Foto: Théophile Fontaine

In other specifics, Chiffchaffs (Gransanger) were the most abundant species, closely followed by 10 Blackcaps (Munk), that the sharp reader might have noticed, Théo spelled wrong on the blog the other day, so we're now calling them BACKcaps. Most of them were even caught in our favourite net, that we call the Apple Garden, which hasn't been opened this year before April.

Today's numbers:

Trækket på Odden: What a lovely day to be outside, enjoying the sun, and looking out for the few migrating birds of the day ! In total, we saw only 599 birds of 38 different species, most of them represented by less than 10 individuals. The weather was particularly nice for raptors migration, and it seems that it would get even better tomorrow for both raptors and passerines ! We were really pleased to spot the first Tree Sparrow (Skovspurv) of the year, calling and chilling out in the bushes.

The Tree sparrow on its branch. The characteristic black spot in the middle of the white cheek is easily noticeable. Picture by Cyann Ménard/GFU

On a completely different note, I heard that today is the World Curlew Day, so let’s talk about Curlews (Storspove). We saw a few of them today, one of them even greeted us with their melodious call. Nothing unusual so far, but I got some other news that I wanted to share here. A friend of mine sent me a Facebook post from the National Marine Park of the Arcachon Bay, which is an important stopover site for long-distance migratory birds. This post is about the Common Redshanks (Rødben) and the Curlews fitted by the National Marine Park with GPS tags, allowing to track their migratory paths. Looking at the paths on the map, we can see that some of the Curlews who left France in the beginning of April have passed really close to Gedser Odde a few days later… Curious, my friend asked about the migration date of those birds along the Danish coasts (yes, she is an invested friend), and got a quick answer : two birds indeed flew past Gedser on April 5 and 10 ! We actually counted one single curlew on the 5th, and many others on the 9th, so we might have counted those birds among the groups. The routes, the distances, and the speed at which migratory birds travel will never fail to impress me.

The red lines represent the Redshank migratory paths, while the yellow ones are of the Curlews. You can clearly see that 2 of the yellow lines get quite close to Gedser Odde, before spreading out from one side to another of the Baltic Sea. Map from the Facebook post of the Parc National Marin du Bassin d'Arcachon.

Se alle dagens observationer ved Gedser Odde i DOFbasen.

The rest of the day: In the afternoon we all had our lunches outside in the sun, while listening to the birds, with some of us (including me, Mathilde) still guessing, more than knowing all the songs and calls.

The weather stayed amazing all day, and we had some sweet Danish visitors, that came by to enjoy the sun and a drink on our benches. I had the joy of telling them about the station and showing them our taxidermy bird collection, and they were very surprised at how many Danish bird names Théo knew.

In the evening we were still soaking in the last sunshine, when Olga suggested we ate the delicious dinner she had prepared outside as well - so now it really feels like spring!

 Dinner outside today! Foto: Mathilde Sif Eiby / GFU.

Folk på stationen: Cyann Ménard, Mathilde Sif Eiby, Sjoerd van Baal, Théophile Fontaine, Olga Fernandez Enriquez