My conversation with the "weather frog" (Grøn frø - Pelophylax esculentus) at the pond yesterday evening did not help for today...

The weather forecast for this morning did not look well, already yesterday, when we checked the weather. But you never know, especially here, at the tip so close to the sea, the weather can change very fast and sometimes, the forecast can change within less then 20 minutes. So we had our alarms set. But honestly, we were not to sad, when we saw, that there was way to much rain for ringing, which would not stop for the next five hours. It is out of the season now, but still, we always did the five standard hours of ringing so far.

The rain meant, that we could go back to sleep and this was much appreciated, because yesterday evening, Henrik and I had exchanged the nets at the pond and in the end, it was quite late and there was still the blog to write… At this point, I need to apologise, the last moth in the list, A. lithoxylea was not caught at GFU but in Hans garden, the moth list was also done quite late, but I will update it with the right location now. Besides that, this rainy night, I didn´t have the light on, so no new moth for today.

For Henrik, it was the last day for this time, he left the station in the late morning, but will be back rather soon in August.

The ringing:

So a boring and quite day? No, later in the morning, I opened the nets, the weather looked fine outside and on the radar, but soon, a slight but constant drizzle began. I checked the radar and indeed, it showed this now, so I shut the nets down again, because in a while, it should stop for real and I could open again. After I had waited for a while, it was dry outside, the radar showed no rain at all for this afternoon and I opened again. I just had the nets open for 1.15 h, then, it started drizzling again. This time, the radar showed no rain at all. What a crazy weather! At the moment, it is a very sensitive time, temperatures are fine, so if 2k/ 3k+ birds get a little wet, but are extracted soon, we don´t need to worry, they won´t get cold and will be dry soon. But we are now also getting young birds, that just left the nest. They are much more sensitive and we do not want them to get wet. So I closed again. The 1.15 hours I could do were quite good, I caught 6 birds of six species, of which 3 were new and 3 recaps. The highlight was a White Wagtail “Hvid Vipstjert”, that I caught in one of the new nets at the pond!

People: Henrik Jørgensen, Hans Lind, Hanelie Sidhu