It was just too nice!

A beautiful sunny, calm, warm day today but maybe it was a little bit too nice as there were very few grounded migrants in the garden, especially when compared to yesterday, with no fog to drop them in resulted in a quiet morning's ringing.   Birds caught included a Firecrest - the first for a long time, the second Great-spotted Woodpecker of the spring, 9 Willow Warblers, a Redstart, 2 Garden Warblers and 2 Whitethroats.

Firecrest

Great-spotted Woodpecker

 

It was a good day in the surrounding area however with pride of place going to a brilliant female Citrine Wagtail which Louis found on the tip in the morning, it flew in from the west to spent a short while feeding on the beach but disappeared before any other birders arrived.   There was some good passage recorded as well with another excellent count of 42,000 Barnacle Geese heading NE - although the majority of them 'cut the corner', passing to the north of us here on the point, often just showing as a smear on the horizon!   This count is part of an all time record spring for this species here at Gedser!

 

Other birds recorded through the day included 42 White-winged Black Terns east (part of a big invasion into Denmark today), 710 Brent Geese, a Great-northern Diver, 2 specifically unidentified large Divers (GND/WBD), 16 Honey Buzzards north, a Hobby, a Serin and 3 White-tailed Eagles - a glorious day!

 



One of an impressive brood of 10 Great Tits ringed today at the station