Last night after checking the weather, we decided to send a message to Hans saying that we would be very happy if he could visit us at 08:00 am because the weather was looking very good for catching hundreds of birds and sincerely, we were a bit scared that we could not handle them alone. We left absolutely everything ready and also, we started the first round 10 minutes before schedule because we could see already a few birds on the nets. So, one box each in the hand, we started the first round. However, disappointingly, after al our prepararations in the whole day, we only caught 54 new birds.

But we had a bird species that has only been ringed twice in the history of Gedser… we caught a Mosehornugle, Asio flammeus (Short-eared owl)!!

The only time that has ringed before was exactly two years ago, 29/10/2019 by Anton Liebermann, and not in the nets but by night catching, so we were extremely happy and not disappointed that we did not have more birds in the nets. To catch the owl was a team effort, while I was extracting a Gærdesmutte, Gail went ahead on the round and called me very loudly, which she never does, so I ran very quickly to her. She was holding the net to stop the Mosehornugle escaping and she let me extract it! Gail is a hero!!

Some other people came to visit us, but mainly just to see owl, we are not so cool.

Gail and me have not much experience on owls, but after checking the books and studying more a bit later on, we confirmed that our first impressions were correct and decided that it was a beautiful juvenile female.

The rest of the day was surprisingly slow in terms of birds, so after standard time we started playing Krognæb, Pinicola enucleator (Pine grosbeak), a bird species that has been seen in North Denmark and that will make Gert very very happy, so we want to get it so he (and us, of course) can see it!

After closing the nets we went for a lovely run in the great afternoon weather and did some yoga. Life is good! No complaints!

As always, the data from today.

Best,

Ramón.

PS: the title of the blog was suggested by our most british person of the station...