07-10-2013: Respect your Elders!

Although it was a quiet morning at the nets with only 45 birds ringed it was a great morning for Susanne as it was at a relatively steady pace which allowed her to absorb a lot more information and get to grips with ageing and sexing the species being processed without too much pressure.

Species that found their way into the mist nets involved:

Wren 1

Sparrowhawk 2

Dunnock 3

Robin 12

Common Redstart 1

Blackcap 1 

Chiffchaff 18

Goldcrest 2

Blue Tit 4

Brambling 1

The undoubted highlight of the morning for us and Susanne especially, was the Putative 2K Female Sparrowhawk that was caught in the sparrowhawk nets. It was a great learnig curve for her and  provided a great comparison to the juvenile birds that she had caught for the 1st time during the previous days.

Putative 2K Female Sparrowhawk, note the marginal coverts and outer lesser coverts with rusty-buff fringes as oppose to just retained faded adult type coverts from a previous feather generation Photo by Jack Ashton-Booth.

Susanne's smile speaks volumes of how beautiful this bird was!

A retained juvenile Secondary (on shape, pattern and colouration ) was observed symmetrically on both inner arms and allowed us to age this bird accordingly, coupled with some more retained juvenile TYPE feathers in the mantle, upper tail and median coverts. Photo by Jack Ashton-Booth

A text from Louis alerting us to the presence of a Shore Lark heading towards the station was unfortunately missed but we were very happy for him as these a great birds to see anywhere and at anytime. 

Shore Lark migrating west from Gedser Tip, photo by Louis Hansen

Other cracking highlights from a morning observing Visible Migration from the tip produced:

• Snow Bunting 1 (the autumns 1st)

• Serin 1 (only the 2nd this autumn)

• 3 CROSSBILL SPECIES:   Two-barred Crossbill in with a flock of  24 Common Crossbills and a Parrot Crossbill heard flying south
• Red-throated Pipit 1 (feeding around the fields at the tip) 

Visibility in the afternoon was very poor and the sky became very milky making observing  migration difiifcult.

Therefore energy was spent elsewhere with efforts made to mend some spring traps for targeting Buteos and Kites, the ringing and migration data was inputted and Susanne cooked us all a Danish Elderberry soup apples and sugared croutons as recommended by Louis.

A fine recommendation from Louis and a massive thank-you to Susanne for making it for us! It was lovely and was a much welcomed vitamin C boost!......It may look like a lot but there are plenty more berries for the birds!