Simon Sigaard Christiansen d. 30. mar. 2023 kl. 15:48
Sidst opdateret af:
Morten Bentzon Hansen d. 26. jun. 2023 kl. 11:18
King Eider 26/3. Photo Erik Christophersen
Finder report of Rustic
Bunting the 25th of March 2023.
This is my third spring volunteering at Skagen Fuglestation. I came for a month in April 2018, and for three and a half months from early March to Mid-June in 2019. Between 2020 and 2022 I spent 18 months working at North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory in Orkney, and 4 months working on Unst, Shetland. I have been lucky enough to see many vagrants and witness some spectacular falls of common migrant species. I always wanted to come back to Skagen and in 2023 the opportunity to do so was impossible to resist. Skagen is unlike anywhere in Britain in terms of birding. The sheer numbers of visibly migrating birds, as well as the species diversity is really amazing for us Brits. As well as raptor migration, Skagen has unparalleled passerine and wildfowl migration compared to any UK site.
The weather has many days been bad for birding up here this March. Prolonged days of snow and cold temperatures followed with prolonged days of fog and mist. Saturday the 25th of March was going to be the last day of warmer temperatures before it dropped down to freezing again. I had a slightly later start than usual and joined Lauren Evans and Rolf Christensen half an hour after sunrise. Thankfully there was only little mist. There were not high numbers of birds migrating, but some nice species were seen in the first few hours. 18 Bewick’s Swan and 23 Tundra Bean Geese migrated out to Sweden, two species I have seen very few of in Britain. Whilst scanning the Skagerrak to the north, the unique shape of a Humpback Whale appeared in my scope, deja vu! It was great to watch this hunch-backed beast surface and dive multiple times as it moved slowly to the north-west at medium distance. Presumably the same animal as seen by us 9 days before.
At 09:35, just as a band of rain came in from the south-west, I was very pleasantly surprised to pick out an adult male King Eider in the large rafts of Common Eider and Common Scoter in the Kattegat to our south. King Eider is rare in the UK away from Shetland. This was only my second ever King Eider and my first adult male. After waiting out the rain for a while, we enjoyed good views of this cartoon-looking sea duck.
King Eider 28/3. Photo: Erik Christophersen
In the following hours, we had Skagen’s joint earliest ever Osprey, two Shags and a 3cy. Caspian Gull (one of five I have seen in Skagen so far this Spring). Passerine numbers had been average; 2063 Chaffinches, 216 Blue Tits and 73 White Wagtails were the highest counts. At 12:54 I was watching the King Eider when a sound overhead caught my attention, a bird making a ticking call. The sound of this call was clouded by a Yellowhammer calling seemingly from the same place. Rolf was instantly onto this ticking call too. Talking after the event, we both went through the same thought process at this time - ‘could this be an aberrant sounding Yellowhammer?’. I got onto two passerines with my naked eye overhead, one a Yellowhammer, the other smaller and slimmer and flying in a jerky way like Buntings do. Crikey! As soon as we linked the ticking call to the visuals of the bird, we both knew that it was a rare ‘ticking bunting’. Let me just add I did not have my binoculars around my neck, as I often take them off when using my scope, especially if it has been a long day in the field. The ‘ticking bunting’ moved off to the north-east and I scrambled for my binoculars. Views had been poor for both of us, and we were none the wiser on species identification. Would we see it again well enough to identify it? Thankfully the bird turned around and came back quite close past us, the calls were even more obvious now there were no other birds calling. The black facial pattern with white stripe through the middle, as well as the obvious breast band seen as the bird came past to our west, left us with no doubt that we were watching a male Rustic Bunting. We lost the bird as a dot above Ellekrattet to the south-west. Denmark’s first ever migrating Rustic Bunting.
The King Eider is the minimum 9th individual recorded of this species in Skagen, following latest records in 2018. Many has enjoyed it the days after and it's currently still present roosting in Kattegat. The 28th of March the observers could at the same time even enjoy three Golden Eagles in the sky. A nice Royal combo. If accepted the Rustic Bunting will be the 4th record for Skagen. The first record back in 1987 was also observed early in spring when a male was roosting and even heard singing between the 21st – 29th March.
3 immature Golden Eagles 28/3. Photo: Christian Andersen Jensen
What are the chances of
finding my two rarest Skagen birds on the same day in late March, having spent four
and a half months here before. Skagen’s best March day ever.
Thanks to Erik Christophersen and Christian Andersen Jensen for the great pictures of the King Eider and the Golden Eagles and to Simon S. Christiansen for additional information in the text.
Det lyder som en god morgen i Skagen Dante! Jeg vil mene dette også må kaldes en trækkende pileværling: https://dofbasen.dk/popobs.php?obs=obs&obsid=19158762
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