Ringmærkning:

Trækket på Odden: Over the last weeks, I had slowly made peace with the thougth that autumn migration is done and we will not see more than a few birds for the rest of the year. So today was a big surprise, when suddenly a lot of birds showed up. And what birds it was! Common Eiders (Somateria mollissima, „very soft wool-body“) were on the move, potentially for the last time this year in this amount. Though the total of 1.946 Eiders was lower than the amount of Redpolls (Acanthis flammea, „flame-coloured redpoll“) two days ago, it seemed much busier. Maybe it is the size of the birds, maybe the fact that they come by in smaller groups, making you much busier. In fact, over the first hour Alba barely had time to look at birds and was constantly writing down numbers. Therefore, she was very relieved when migration slowed down to a more manangeable amount later. Not only Eiders were flying, it seemed as though all waterbirds gathered their strenght for a big day. Eurasian Wigeons (Mareca penelope, „penelope’s small duck“), Northern Shovelers (Spatula clypeata, „shield-bearing spoon“) and Northern Pintails (Anas acuta, „pointy duck“) all migrated by the tip in relatively big numbers, after we barely saw any of them over the last weeks. These ducks were joined by big numbers of our winter guests with both Greater Scaups (Aythya marila, „coal-dusted waterbird“) and Long-tailed Ducks (Clangula hyemalis, „winter clanger“) setting new season records.

After the morning rush had slowed down, Alba and I talked about bird we would like to see today; one of my biggest hopes was a Black-legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla, „three-toed kittiwake“). Alba noted that she could not do a lot about that, apart of course of finding one. Sure enough, she held her word: Not long after, she spotted a gull flying very close to the shore and, interestingly, it had a black pattern on its back. Kittiwakes share this trait only with Little Gulls (Hydrocoloeus minutus, „small water-jackdaw“), which we could quickly rule out by size comparisons to other gulls. The bird slowly flew by very closly which gave us enough time to admire its great pattern (which also clearly identifies it as a 1k bird). Amazing! Thank you so much for finding it! Kittiwakes are oceanic gulls that normally spend the winter in more open waters. Still some are expected to come by Gedser Odde every year. But oceanic birds coming close seems to be a reoccuring theme today as, again, the previous record of Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus, „idiot from bass rock“) was broken. A grand total of 9 of these elegant birds flew past, beating yesterday’s high count of 8. I could continue naming all species of waterbirds that were more active today than the last weeks, but I think I should stop now. Just take a look at our counts yourself.

Fugle registreret i standardtiden: 3.179. Arter: 36. Tællingen startet 07:13, sluttet klokken 12:13.

Se alle dagens observationer på Gedser Odde i DOFbasen. 

På stationen: Alba M. Holmberg, Henrik Jørgensen, Marek Ebert