Opened my eyes at 5:00am this morning. Dark, apart from the silent flash from the lighthouse, all is quiet, where's my watch! No sound outside, No wind?

Light breeze from the north west. Here we go, could be busy. Weetabix, fruit and fat free yoghurt. Nice cup of Yorkshire tea from home. Set up for the first couple of hours.

5:45am and still dark, headlamps on, I take the north garden and Rainer the east garden and meet near the gate. A few robins "ticking" in the bushes. That's a good sign. Nets up by 6:15 and back at the house. Another cuppa sitting outside watching activity as it grew gradually lighter. Out at sea the lights of the early ferry Rostock. A few small passerines flitting between the bushes.

6:45am I leave for first round, just light. Plenty of bird bags, just in case. Five or six birds in each net, more in the high net. Get part way round and take what I have back to the lab, getting heavy round my neck. Hans arrives and much needed help. The song thrushes and dunnocks from yesterday have been replaced in numbers by that staple Gedser autumn fayre of robins, chiffchaffs and a few others.

Unable to break the chains that tie us to the desks in the lab, Hans kindly bought out  flask of fresh coffee. Gert arrived along with Anders to help with extracting the birds from the nets, while Rainer and myself were kept busy processing the birds. 

Bespoke boxes were used to keep multiple birds of the same species. 

10.00am, party visiting from the local bird club. Very interested in what we were doing and the value to science. They all, individually, saw the ringing process. I do a lot of ringing demonstrations at home and apart from the language differences, they are just the same. Showing birds to the public at close range  is such a privilege. They also provided some excellent and much welcome cake.  

Then came the blue tits! Several flocks of up to 50 birds were seen flying over the garden and 88 managed to find the way into the nets. Danish blue tits are augmented by migratory birds with the Swedish population moving south in to Germany. In the UK I have been a trainer for over 20 years and we love blue tits (and great tits) because they form the staple diet of trainees during the winter months. Ringing blue tits provides excellent training to new ringers. They are a challenge to extract from mist nets, but are an easy introduction to the moult process and ageing techniques,

12:30pm, end of the standardised ringing session. My stomach is rumbling, Rainer has decided to go back to the house. I decide to carry on, don't want to sit inside when there are birds to study. Quick sandwich on the go. Some nice birds coming through now, a few bramblings, chiffchaffs, a late garden warbler. A nice surprise was a short-toed treecreeper. Very different with the common treecreeper with a greyer hue, but only reliably identified by biometric measurement. Bill and hind claw. 

Short-toed Treecreeper/korttået træløber with long bill and short hind claw

Please note the white "diamant-spots" on the tips of the primaries

4:30pm, Starting to go quiet, so decide to call it a day. Closing the nets and processing the remaining birds, ignoring a few retraps from earlier in the day. Back to the house, somethng to eat.

16:30pm, Start entering the data onto the Fuglestation database, then entering on to DOFBasen and Trektellen. Filing the full data sheets. Rainer makes supper. Then write the blog. Trying to get my camera to link up to the office computer. Sorry it won't work, so no pictures tonight, unless Hans manages to upload an image remotely.

Now 20:10pm. Soon be morning, wind turned west, so should be a few stragglers left in the garden, maybe some newbies. Can't wait.

Hilsen