24th May 2016
Staff: DWE, MLA, LST, LAR, MBR, DHT, MPN
Weather: Sunny warmy day ending with stronger winds
Projects: Great Reed Warbler, Marsh Harrier, Ortolan Bunting, Skylark
You have the bad days, you have the good days and you have the OK days. And today was definitely a good one! Of course the weather helps a lot, and mainly gives a touch of motivation to everyone. Nevertheless, when the day starts in the right direction, you want to go throughout the day with full strength right until the end! And that was today. Let me tell you what happened.
4.00 in the morning was time for Ortolan Bunting project. DWE, MLA, LST, together with MPN drove to Sorosletten to set up misnets in two different patches of trees to try to ring 2 males. On the first round to check the nets, we were delightful to see 2 unringed Ortolan Buntings in each net, one male and one female with a fairly new brood patch! The female was quickly processed so she could go back to her breeding businesses without too much disturbance. It wasn’t the two wanted males, but catching a female brings a lot more with it. We were able to confirm a presence of a couple in that area and breeding activity as well! As it is not that common to catch females, we believe the misnet was set up pretty close to the nest location. Next step will be the location of the nest with careful observations and the catching of her partner which is believed to be unringed.
So far in this season, 3 Ortolan Buntings were ringed, and 1 was recaptured. In Sorosletten, it appears that we have 3 males in the northern part of Sorosletten, all ringed, and at least one confirmed couple in the southern part, with a second male singing in the area to be confirmed.
5.00 was time for the GRW team to explore the lakes. MBR successfully captured 3 males in Sörbysjön and kept exploring all the corners of that lake. DHT had a female recaptured in Rysjön that was born in Kvismaren in 2014 and LAR surveyed Åslasjön were we have a lot going on for the project with 7 males fighting for territory and calling for females, but only with 3 females around already stable and maybe 1 more possible female getting ready to establish herself in this lake.
9.00, Skylark project was given some attention. MPN joined MLA and LST once more to check one potential study area. The goal was to determine in which breeding stage the birds are now. Apparently, in Mörby, in a field of 35ha, a lot of Skylarks are present with all sorts of different activities. For 2/3 hours the team was able to see birds searching for food, delivering big insects to other birds, birds flying with nest material, males singing high up to defend territory, birds chasing each other in groups of two, three and four. We even saw a bird singing with insects in his mouth at the same time! We went back confused with what to determine about the breeding stage they are on now, but excited for having so many things going on. We will see about that later when the behaviour observations will start for nest locations!
16.00, DWE, MLA and LST went for Marsh Harrier nest finding. I will not say this is a hard task nor the hardest, but it is definitely one task where it is easy for everyone involved to get frustrated. However, changing the tasks and understanding both roles (giving directions from outside and far away and finding the nest while walking inside reeds) helps everyone to know the tricks and to find the best way to deal with them. So today was DWE turn to walk in the reeds in Källviken and Fågelsjön and search for nest while LST was giving instructions from Åslaholmen. LST had already experienced the hard walk in the reeds so he was the most concise as he could and DWE had the opportunity to experience from inside what it is to follow the instructions when you have water almost entering the waders, your feet inside the mud almost until your knees and huge patch of reeds in front of you that looks like it is not going to open a path for you to walk in.
I have to say, personally I’m really glad I am having this team. We all get grumpy with each other from time to time, but we help each other out in our grumpy way. Yesterday, we really had a broad view of the struggles of Marsh Harrier nest finding and today we got more confident that future good days will be coming for this project. I guess the team is ready now to split in this project and focus in some other projects at the same time. Multitasking team :)
Anyway, despite the struggles, together we were able to successfully find 3 nests in Fågelsjön and one extra in Åslasjön! With the best skills of all of us we got 4 nests in about 4 hours.
As I mentioned in the beginning, in days like this, you just want to take the most of it and go powerful until the end! So we were considering to go to try again Rysjön after dinner, but the bad weather made us stay at home and just celebrate the successful day we had with all Ängafallet habitants. Lovely end of the day, and now ready to go throughout some bad weather days.
Meanwhile, everyone is always looking for extras during working hours and today LAR saw an Osprey fishing, Bearded Reedlings, found a Coot nest and a couple of Mute Swans with a male displaying in Åslasjön. MLA and DWE had the company of 5 Black Terns flying close to the canoe and saw a Little Grebe in Fågelsjön. MBR confirmed the Whooper Swan couple in Sörbysjön is still taking care of their nest.
And to finish today’s blog, today was also a day to get some sun tanned face! :)
MLA