Kvismare fågelstation, Sweden - Day 17 (16 in reality)

Juvenile female Ruff (Reeve)

Juvenile Female Ruff (Brushane)

Juvenile Wood Sandpiper (Grönbena)

Juvenile Common Sandpiper (Drillsnäppa)

Juvenile Lapwing (Tofsvipa)

Juvenile Starling (Stare)

Technically this is from day 16, but as we didn't head out this morning due to bad weathers and last nights wader catch was so good, I felt it deserved it's own blog post!

We opened the same 7 nets again (moving 3 of them slightly) at around 17.30. Lots of waders about and on the move today with a flock of 9 Curlew Sandpiper, 12 Ringed Plover with a further 2 Curlew Sandpiper, Bar-tailed Godwit, 3 Knot and lots of Ruff, Spotted Redshanks, Wood, Green and Common Sandpipers. We were very excited for what we might catch and opening the nets earlier allowed us to experience a different kind of wader mist-netting, rather than in the dark where we struggled to extract, we couldn't see the net and when we caught the birds, we struggled to look at the bird in weak light so we couldn't really enjoy them.

The first two birds we caught were two juvenile Lapwing. The first could only just fly but Craig managed to grab this one as it struggled through the long grassy marsh. The first net round produced a 2nd juvenile Lapwing and 2 juvenile Common Sandpipers. The 2nd round was by far the best, with a Common Sandpipier, 2 Wood Sandpiper and a juvenile female Ruff!

The Ruff was a truly stunning bird and much bigger than I was expecting! I was thinking they would be a similar size to Redshank, but they are really stocky birds like a cross between a Blackbird and Chicken! The bird was sexed as a female based on wing-length, bill length and tarsus.

The final round produced 5 non-passerines in the form of juvenile Starlings. It was only 10pm so we would have loved to stay out for longer, but one of the reasons for the decent wader passage was intermittent thunder storms throughout the day. We happened to find a clear spell for the ringing, but the lighting was getting closer on the final net-round so we made the executive decision of taking down the nets.

A fantastic evening's wader ringing!

Day 17 - went to Hammarmaden with Jasper as it's his last day and there was a large increase in waders from yesterday with Little Stint, Grey Plover, 10 Curlew Sandpiper, 9 Ruff, 3 Knot, 3 Bar-tailed Godwit, 16 Dunlin, 9 Ringed Plover, 5 Greenshank and the usual plethora of Wood Sand, Green Sand, Common Sand, Lapwing and Snipe. I think we will be stupid if we don't go back tonight to improve the wader todays for Kvismaren 2012