Big Thanks Carl for letting me show some pictures on the blog! I’ll show some photos of Ottenby and the bird observatory where I’ve been working last autumn. We’ve mainly been ringing birds, but I managed to do some landscape, wildlife and bird photography in between.
The bird observatory itself is situated on the most southern tip of the island Öland on the eastern coast of Sweden. The island is shaped by extensive cultural landscape and plays an important role as breeding location for many agricultural bird species such as Montagu’s Harriers or Barred Warblers. Following the Swedish eastern coastline southwards, migrating birds from northern and central Scandinavia are gathering every year on this cape to stop and forage to do the big step over the east Sea. That is what makes it a excellent place to watch and study bird migration …
Regarding the actual bird catching, the observatory has been running a standardized program running with usual mist nets and Helgoland traps since 1946. The results of this long study are very interesting and meaningful especially concerning population fluctuations of diverse bird species.
Common species caught are among others robins, goldcrests, willow warblers, chiffchaffs, blue and great tits, pied and spotted flycatchers, sedge warblers, lesser and common whitethroats, blackcaps, white and yellow wagtails, song thrushes and sparrow hawks. However the composition was of course constantly changing over the weeks in autumn and due to the prevailing eastern winds quite lot’s of eastern migrants turned up (not just on Öland) like yellow-browed and dusky warblers, a little bunting, siberian accentors and a lazur tit.
