The ringing:

This morning looked good for ringing and for opening the pond nets, it was a little cloudy and shallow wind. But there were no birds at the pond in the early morning. Instead, I got a little surprise in the garden in the first round, there was a Thrush Nightingale “Nattergal” in the net. Henrik had one a few days ago, but it is a very nice species in hand. Here in Denmark, the Thrush Nightingale “Nattergal” is more common, and the Common Nightingale “Sydlig Nattergal” is quite rare, but of course, you need to pay attention. Besides appearance, wing formula and wing length, a very good characteristic to differentiate them is looking at P1. Last autumn, I ringed a few birds of both species which came at the same time, and I thought P1 to be really helpful and obvious characteristic. While it is very short in Thrush Nightingales “Nattergal”, it does not even reach the end of the primary coverts, the Common Nightingale has a very big, long P1, which is noticeably longer than the primary coverts. I took a picture to show you the short P1 of this Thrush Nightingale “Nattergal”. Unfortunately, I do not have a comparison picture of a Common Nightingale “Sydlig Nattergal”, but there is a good drawing of that in Svensons Identification Guide to European Passerines, which I can show to you instead.

P1 Thrush Nightingale "Nattergal"

Another nice bird in the garden was a 1k Black Redstart “Husrødstjert”.

1K Husrødstjert

When the morning came to an end, I had zero rounds in the garden and thought, well, game over for today, but now, the pond got alive! The Barn Swallows “Landsvale” had arrived with their young and one of the 1k birds landed in my net.

1K Landsvale

I was already confident but then I saw, that there were two 1k Stillits low in the bottom pocket of the other net. In the closing round, I found another White Wagtail “Hvid Vipstjert” in one of the pond nets, so I decided, just to close in the garden and keep the pond nets open for a bit longer. I exchanged the bottom line of one net, that was broken and went in to look at the moths. Regularly, I went to the pond, but there was nothing new. So I closed. It was a morning with very nice species in the nets!

The moths:

It was a rather good day for moths today, I had days with more, but also with fewer moths. There were also some new species in the trap. I want to show Euthrix potatoria “Græsspinder” because I got male and female in the trap today and I also had the larvae some weeks ago.

Euthrix potatoria (male top, female bottom)

Euthrix potatoria larvae

People: Hanelie Sidhu