Thursday 9 August 2012

Kvismare fågelstation, Sweden - Day 28

Juvenile Tree Pipit
Juvenile Tree Pipit - Note the fresh plumage and the black thorns in the median coverts
Juvenile Dunnock
Juvenile Dunnock - Black vertical line going all the way through the greater coverts are one of the ways you can age this.

We woke this morning to rain, so everyone went back to bed for a while with the aim to go to Öby Kulle to catch some migrants mid-morning. I however stayed up and plonked myself at the end of the garden with a scope, chair and cup of tea.
Visible migration came in the form of:
Tufted Duck - 9
Ruff - 3 (2,1)
Curlew - 1
Bar-tailed Godwit - 24
Greenshank - 6
Caspian Tern - 3 (flying over Vallen with 1 migrating alone)
Black-headed Gull - 58 (34, 1, 21, 1)
Common Gull 40 (17, 21, 1, 1)
Herring Gull 3
Woodpigeon - 162 (78, 84)
Tree Pipit - 5
Northern Bullfinch - 2 (my first ever of this race. They landed in a tree in the garden calling and then flew off west)

At around 7am, the drizzle stopped, so I put up 3 nets in the garden. We only managed to catch 3 birds, but one of them was a bit special. It was a Dunnock! It doesn't sound like much, but it's the first to be ringed here in 2012, so was nice. We also caught a Blue Tit and a Willow Warbler

Once the rest of the lazy staff woke up, we went to Öby Kulle erecting 4 nets. We only had a small catch made up of Willow Warbler, Great Tit, Nuthatch, Chaffinch and Yellowhammer, but the final round saw me discover a stunning juvenile Tree Pipit in the net. This is my first pipit sp in the hand and I have been wanting to catch Tree Pipit since the 2nd day I got here. Stunning bird!

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