First Day at Kvismaren, Sweden (Passerine Ringing/Banding)

Kvismaren Bird Observatory, situated right smack in the middle of central Sweden, is simply...magical...yes, that's definitely the word I want to use! The first morning I woke up at 4:00am, jumped out of the top level of my bunkbed (practically), and stepped out onto the porch into crisp, dew-laden morning air to stand in line for the bathroom (located in a different part of the traditional, wooden, typically-Swedish, red-and-white cottage). The fields across the unpaved driveway are covered in mist, the horizen consists of 4-5 shades of pink, purple, and blue, and one feels mysteriously transported back to the Mesozoic, with the otherwordly calls of 200+ Cranes off in the distance, along with hundreds to thousands of Greylag Geese.
Afterwards I packed morning snacks and eat a quick breakfast (coffee mug of cereal and milk), and with my packed rucksack and bins I slip into rubber boots. I hopped onto one of the station's bikes and head down the path by 4:30am.

If it is not raining, we do the ringing at 3 main sites, trying to spend equal time ringing at each so as to get a good sampling of the migration through the greater area of Kvismare, although some sights definitely tend to be more productive (if it is very windy, there is a 4th site we could go to). The first morning we went to the closest one (5 minutes by bike), called "Vallen" which just happens to be the sight where they tend to catch the most birds. This spot is on the edge of freshwater wetland habitat; consisting of mostly reeds, dotted with trees here and there, which is why about 80-90% of birds caught here are either Reed or Sedge Warblers. Check out the photos below and read their captions for some details of my first morning. Around 10am we stopped catching birds, and so took down the nets. On the way back to the station Teresa (one of the 2 seasonal staff, who has been here since end of April this year participating in many Kvismare projects) and I each counted a giant flock of Cranes going overhead; I thought the flock of 14 I saw in Saxony a month or so ago was something, but the average between our counts here was 185 Cranes! More updates from the first week will be posted shortly, but enjoy these for now, and good birding (or ringing/banding)!

Sunrise (4:30am) at Kvismaren, in Närke, South Central Sweden.

My first morning was an exceptionally busy, with about 100 birds being trapped, banded (ringed), measured, weighed and released. Birds at this sight (closest to the observatory) mostly consist of Reed and Sedge Warblers. From left to right: Helena (visiting assistant), Teresa and Matt (the professional seasonal staff, a.k.a. the "teachers").

One of the first birds caught in the mist nets this morning was this "lifer" Thrush Nightingale (still need to find one in the woods for a "true lifer", of course, though I guess I will have to return in the spring another year for that). So much duskiness on the upper chest and darker overall than Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) (except for rufous tail, see next pic) . They also have a longer primary projection, with up to 8 primary tips visible past the longest tertial, as opposed to only 7 in Nightingale.

Thrush Nightingale (Luscinia luscinia). Here one can sort of see light tips to the greater coverts (also on tertials but not that visible in this pic), indicating that this is a 1st-year bird.

Unfortunately not in focus, but here is a beautiful Lesser Whitethroat (Sylvia curruca) with a black mask contrasting with gray head and brownish-gray back...

Bird-of-the-Day: a young Grasshopper Warbler (Locustella naevia)! What a gorgeous bird: the warm colors, the dark-speckled scapulars, the posture, and best of all...

...the undertail coverts!

Matt (back) and Hannes (front) on the job or as Matt always puts it, "net-round time!" Careful extraction of birds from the mist nets. Here you can see why most of the birds caught are "Seed" Warblers (that is, Sedge and Reed Warblers).

Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis): 1st-year bird without the showing red, white and black face pattern of adult birds. Very lovely wing patterning...

...notice how fresh the flight feathers look. Head is grayish with fine streaking and bill is long, pink and pointed.

Great Reed Warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) are HUGE! It is truly hard to believe they are warblers at all by their size and proportionally large ; never ceases to surprise me each time one is caught. Here Teresa is measuring the wing length here using a ruler with a stop placed at the bend in the wing (zero point), and then length to the tip of the longest of the outer primaries is read from a flattened and straightened wing. This is the European method of measuring wing-length; in North America the wing is not flattened, and they measure the "minimum chord" instead.