What a crazy gathering of resting birds !!

With such a beautiful sunrise, the day could only hold great promise...

Observation : 

Indeed, the migration count was the best since the start of the season, notably including :
- 4,700 common scoters [sortand] during the three-hour count (and 400 more resting in the waves)
- 36 sandwich terns [splitterne] observed migrating !

Low tide, meanwhile, brought a crazyyyy number of resting birds (mainly herring gulls) feeding on a phenomenal number of common seastars, molluscs and serpent stars !
Ole Zoltan Göller, a DofBasen member spotted over 7 000 of herring gulls in the beach. He also showed me a magnificent adult Iceland Gull resting, with its primary feathers as white as snow.
Later, Morgan and Hanelie went for a walk and spotted quite a good number of Caspian gulls, flocks of purple sandpipers, sanderlings and turnstones !

The beach was teeming with thousands of birds, much to our delight !

At the end of the day, Hanelie and I couldn’t resist the temptation of one last walk along the beach… hoping to spot the Iceland Gull again.

We were glad we’d brought our binoculars and braved the cold...As soon as we reached the beach, I spotted a Black-headed Gull relatively close by, resting near the shore ! Then,  Hanelie also spotted quite a few Caspian gulls; she was trying to teach me to recognise the subtle details... but it’s still tricky for me!
In the end, Hanelie, with her eagle eye, spotted a herring gull ringed on its right leg. After several checks, we were able to confirm that it was a yellow ring with four letters: VKNL.
Let’s try a little game… could you find the country where the bird was ringed using this website?
Find a colour-ring project | cr-birding

We'll give the answer in tomorrow's blog ! 

In the meantime, here are today’s photos and a recap of the ringing!

A wonderful iceland gull resting on Blavand beach, picture by Ole Zoltan Göller




A black-legged kittiwake resting on the beach, picture by Clara

 


To the left a Caspian Gull and to the right a young Herring Gull eating a common seastar, through the telescope by Hanelie

Purple Sandpiper "Sortgrå Ryle" through the telescope by Hanelie

A lot of Common Seastars to feed on for the gulls! By Hanelie

Ringing : 

It looks a bit like passerine migration did not reach Blåvands Huk yet. Only some Chiffchaffs “Gransanger” are slowly arriving – today we had seven new ones. Something is moving but very slow. Our already ringed birds are staying and new ones are only very slowly arriving: Today, the number og recaptures was higher than the one of new ringed birds…

Going to the beach and looking at the resting gulls and waders was a bit more interesting today, which we also did.

In the afternoon, my mother, Karin, arrived at the station from Germany and we are looking forward to spending a week with her and also having a car at the station for at least a bit.

At the station:  Clara Delahaye, Hanelie Sidhu, Karin and Morgan Jarmer