The wind was not too strong this morning and blowing from the South.
I opened the nets as usual and try to figure out if there were many birds around. It seemed like there was a bit more activity and I heard a cuckoo in the Northern part of the island. It moved very close to the house when I was going back and moved around all day long but never got trapped in the end.
The first round was not very busy nor too calm, a few willow warblers, some garden warblers and a couple of lesser whitethroat showed that new birds had arrived during the night.
In between 1st and 2nd round, I had time for a coffee and saw a bird trapped in the net through the window. I was happy to see that it was a red backed shrike. He (because it was a gorgeous male) was apparently not so happy to see me and bit me hard several times during the ringing but especially during the photo session afterwards. This is how dedicated I am to my readers 🙂
After I released it, it was time for the second round and it was a busy one! A good amount of willow warblers had arrived on the island! I started ringing and it was confortable to be two, meaning we could continue to take measurements on every bird without being too stressed out by the time.
Egil started the 3rd round by himself and I finished to ring on time to help him only a litte. There were still good number of willow warblers in the nets and a few redstars. But after that, it dropped from round to round and we thought about closing around 4pm after rounds almost empty and full of retraps of the day. One of the last round brought us a spotted flycatcher and we finally called it a day.
But it has been a great day! It was the best ringing day for the spring season so far with 174 birds ringed: 142 løvsanger (willow warblers), 3 gransanger (chiffchaff), 1 munk (blackcap), 5 hagesanger (garden warblers), 2 tornsanger (whitethroat), 4 møller (lesser whitethroat), 1 rødstruppe (robin), 1 grafluesnapper (spotted flycatcher), 1 svarthvit fluesnapper ( pied flycatchers), 8 rødstjert (redstar) , 4 grønnfink (greenfinches), 1 brunsisik (redpoll) and 1 tornskate (red-backed shrike).
Marie and Egil
