Dagbok SFOS

Again, we open most of the nets at 3am this morning but it was already windy and there
were few clouds around. These were not really good conditions for ringing and it got worst with
the wind picking up around 11. We closed at 12, with only 7 birds ringed today: 2 willow warblers,
2 chiffchaffs, 2 meadow pipits and 1 young greenfinch.
There wasn’t much activity during the day on the island. Tomorrow wew are expecting some rain
and strong winds but if we manage to open at some point, maybe some birds could be around.

Nets were open at 3am today and it was cloudy with was a really slight breeze. As soon as the
sun rised, the sky cleared up and the wind increased slowly through the day and turned west.

There were few birds in the nets but we got quite excited in the first round this morning
because one of them was, again, a bird wearing a foreign ring! This time, it was a spotted flycatcher
from Italy and the ring looked very new! This brings our retraps from birds ringed abroad to 9! Here
are the details:

3 have been
ringed in Sweden: 1 lesser whitethroat, 1 blackap and 1 robin

1 in Denmark:
a garden warbler

2 in Belgium:
1 willow warbler and 1 meadow pipit;

1 in
Holland: a willow warbler

1 in Portugal:
a willow warbler

And finally
this spotted flycatcher ringed in Italy!

These are very interesting results, helping us to know more about the birds movement and
migration!

Concerning the ringing itself, 19 birds were ringed today: 13 willow warblers, 1 trush
nightingale, 2 lesser whitethroat, 2 garden warblers, and 1 pied flycatcher.

We can only hope that some of these birds will also be retrap somewhere else in the future
and help us understand more about their life history.

Nets were open at 3am today. It was a bit windy but not too much and it seemed very quiet. And
it was. Hopefully, the young greenfinches have grown and were wondering around, kind of saving
the day.

Per Espen and a whole team arrived in the early afternoon, so we kept the nets open until 9pm.

Even so, it was a few birds around and 14 birds were ringed today: 8 greenfinches, 1 linnet,
1 meadow pipit, 1 lesser whitethroat, 1 garden warbler and only 2 willow warblers.

Unfortunately, the weather forecast is predicting some strong winds for the next few days. But
tomorrow seems alright. Lets cross fingers for the week!

It was already windy this morning at 3 when we open and the wind continued to increase until
11am. As a result, not all nets could be open and some nets were closed at 10.30. It also had
the consequence that very few birds were around and even fewer were caught.

24 birds were ringed today: 20 willow warblers, 2 blackcaps, 1 lesser whitethroat and 1
whitethroat, with the nets closed at 2pm.

We were a few people at the ringing station today so I open all the nets and they were ready
at 3.45. Around 9, three more nets were set up as well.

The sky was clear blue in the morning with little wind from the south. In the afternoon the
wind increased a bit and the sky became partly cloudy but there were very few birds around.

We stopped the ringing at 6pm with 41 birds ringed. The highlight of the early morning was
a red breasted flycatcher in the first round. It was a young male with much orange! Not the
handsome adult yet, but we are getting there. 1 robin, 1 trush nightingale, 1 restart, 1 blackbird,
2 icterine warblers, 1 lesser whitethroat, 1 garden warbler, 1 chiffchaff, 28 willow warblers,
1 greenfinch and 2 redpolls constitute the birds of today.

There also has been two more retraps from abroad today! One lesser whitethroat from sweden
and 1 meadow pipit from belgium!

It was raining at 3am today and I had to wait until 8 to be able to open some nets. Showers
kept on showing up now and then so I opened only 3 nets in the beginning and after a couple
of rounds, had 11 nets open. Unfortunately, some heavier rain started again at 2pm and I had
to close. Nevertheless, it was an interesting morning with 36 birds ringed of a good variety. The
highlight of the day was a Blyth’s reed warbler, a bird I had never even seen, it’s a rarity at
home! The wing formula confirmed the species. Except for this special one, the other news is
that garden warbler (10) dethrone the willow warblers (9) this morning! There were also 2
icterine warblers, 6 blackcaps, 2 lesser whitethroats, 2 spotted flycatchers and 4 redstarts.

At 5pm, I opened 3 nets close to the house again and they just brought me a new
species for the day: a sedge warbler. So, now it’s 37 birds ringed today.

If we have a look at the podium of individuals ringed by species, at the moment:

Number 3:
Chiffchaffs with 115 individuals ringed this spring up to now

Number 2:
Robins with 227 individuals ringed this spring up to now

Number 1:
Willow warblers with 1101 individuals ringed this spring up to now!

But from
these last days, the Sylvia warblers are catching up! We’ll see!

At 3am it was way too windy to open any nets. I started opening some at 6am when the wind
had dropped a little bit and I picked only the protected ones. I open some more a couple of rounds
later and could maintained them open until 1pm where the wind had started picking up again and
there were so few birds in the nets anyway.

25 birds were ringed today, but it was definitely a day of quality over quantity! Except for the 14

classical willow warblers, there has been a good diversity in the nets today with a bit of everything;
1 blackcap, 1 whitethroat, 2 lesser whitethroats, 1 trush nightingale ( the first one I actually get to
ring, since I had a couple of retraps already), 1 redstart, the first whinchat of the year!, 1 common
redpoll and 1 linnet. Seabird watching seemed to be good in the morning but I didn’t spot much in the
afternoon.

The weather was playing with my nerves this morning, not deciding if it was going to rain or not.
Heavy clouds were here from 3 am and stayed until the evening. In the end, it didn’t rain and the
wind moved south in the afternoon. But there were really few birds through all day and the island
was particularly quiet and almost silent except for a couple of garden warblers and trush
nightingales. At 4am, I opened some nets and open the rest at 7am when the sky cleared up a bit.
The round were quiet but there were surprinsingly quite a few spotted flycatchers around and I
thought there might be more caught than traditional willow warblers but I was wrong.

21 birds ringed today in the end: 4 young greenfinches, 2 chiffchaffs, 5 willow’s,
3 whitethroat, 4 spotted flycatchers, 2 garden warblers and 1 whitethroat.