Went birding last Saturday morning, briefly before the oven was turned on to 35°C, but not too much was around. A significant increase in Wood Sandpipers and Common Snipe was notable, and there were several huge Lapwing flocks (one with as many as 150 birds), and one of which contained several Common Greenshanks dispersed throughout, discovered first by their distinctive, falling tew-tew-tew flight call, to me reminiscent of Greater Yellowlegs only usually slightly more relaxed (delivered not quite so rapidly). Four Black-necked Grebes (Eared Grebes) were a nice find at Stöhna, as was a distant soaring Honey Buzzard at the same location. Over the past few weeks, there has also been increasing numbers of small flocks and pairs of Cranes found at most locations around Leipzig at least, and a Marsh Sandpiper was reported a week prior at Windischleuba, but was not refound afterwards to my knowledge.
In two days I will be flying to central Sweden, and heading for a two-week volunteering stint at Kvismare Bird Observatory. I believe this will be a great chance for me to assess my potential at doing something I have dreamt of trying for a long time. I love details and the chance to examine birds in the hand would be a great privilege, and knowing that I am helping the birds indirectly by contributing to the mass of statistics collected over the years which lead to population trends for different species over the years can indicate whether attention must be given to certain ecological needs, in order to assure that bird populations can remain strong or if necessary increase back to a stable population. In addition, some the the birds banded/ringed in Sweden will be recaptured in other parts of Sweden, Europe, Turkey or Africa and thus contribute to the growing database of knowledge on migrations of specific species, which also helps us pinpoint where a problem could be occurring if a certain specie's population seems to be in decline.
To check out what is going on at Kvismare, check out their website: Kvismare Bird Observatory. Within the section "projects" one can peruse the plethora of conservation and ornithological related research, such as the monitoring of Marsh Harriers every summer. The statistical results, when available, are displayed here too, like the pretty steady increase in population of breeding Marsh Harriers between 1954(before the observatory existed!) and 2010! Banding (ringing) has been conducted with the same number of mist nets, in the same locations, and during the same time of year since 1961! Their collected statistics have been used in peer-reviewed journal publications and so I am quite reassured that these guys are quite professional, and so I would receive a good initial education from them hopefully. Well, let's see...should at least be fun, albeit tiring a bit, as I now will explain.
I believe I will be waking up quite early (3-4am) to band/ring mostly passerines until around noon when the weather is decent, and when the conditions are right at night, I might get to also try my hand at netting shorebirds (dark moonless nights are the best i suppose, when the mist nets are least visible). I'm excited but also a bit worried about the potential raptors might also get caught in the nets, as I have seen in the past they have had kestrels and sparrowhawks, though quite rarely. Time to be a man I suppose, and get torn up a bit (or just leave them for the professionals).
I plan to post updates daily (or at least every other day), along with some pics of course; I suspect this is one case where my dinky Canon Powershot will not be too disadvantageous at taking decent photos?
Well, have to go start packing or at least make the packing list.
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