Awakening at the hour of vigils I could hear, to the backdrop of resounding thunder, a few birds calling, notably blackcap, robin and dunnock.  The thunder was far-off but impressive in its resonance.  During lauds (the time when light returns to earth) many blackcaps were uttering their morning prayers - more a tac-tac chant from many bushes, a suitable chant to accomany the opening of the nets.  During prime their chants' intensity pleasing increased.  Wonderfully this was followed by several of these warblers going into the nets in the first couple of net rounds. 

Blackcap is a splendidly distinct member of the warbler family with the males sporting the eponymous black cap and the females a brown cap (have you ever wondered, like me, why the bird is not called browncap)?  And when did man realise that these black and brown capped birds were the same species?

Munk, their Danish name, does not per-se refer directly to their head colouration but is refering to them as "monks".  This reference to monks in repeated in several languages, Norwegian for instance.  Monchsgrasmucke, their German name does not refer to them directly as monks.  Monchsgrasmucke would roughly translate from old German into the "cowled warbler."  The cowl refering to the dark cape that monks, and nuns, use as an outer garment on cold, rainy days.

Many of the blackcaps, like their monastic bretheren following prime, had breakfast.  Today their breakfast of choice was many of remaining blackberries from the garden's brambles.  The blackberries' passage through the birds' digestive system is fast.  Hopefully this fast transit of the gut allows for sufficient time for the berries' sweet sugars to digested and absorbed.  This sugar is then convered into fat, the fuel for their onward migration.  Unforunately for the ringer the blackcaps don't seem to be very effective in digesting all of the berries.  This apparent inefficiency results in the ringers' hands being frequently stained by the birds' purple coloured faeces.  Ah well such are the joys of ringing!

Unsurprisingly blackcaps had a good presence in the day's ringing totals, which were as follows:

Dunnock/Jernspurv 2/-; Robin/Rødhals 1/1; Icterine Warbler/Gulbug 1/-;              Lesser Whitethroat/Gærdesanger 11/-; Whtethroat/Tornsanger 4/1;                      Garden Warbler/Havesanger 1/-; Blackcap/Munk 17/-;  Chiffchaff/Gransanger 6/-; Willow Warbler 3/-; Spotted Flycatcher/Grå Fluesnapper -/1.                                     Total 49 (46/3) 

People at the station: Ole Friss Larsen, Lara Winsloe and Chris Sharp

Ole will not be writing a blog tonight as he has had to go off to a meeting elsewhere in Denmark.