Oh the glamour...

I visited a new birding site on Sunday - the industrial harbour north of Copenhagen. Not an obvious wildlife hotspot but then some of the best birding locations include rubbish dumps, sewage works and nuclear power station outfalls - very glamorous! The area is mostly made up of quays and container storage areas and in summer it hosts the seemingly never-ending procession of cruise ships as they stop off here in the Danish capital. At the northern end of the harbour is an area of rough ground, shrubs, lakes and grassland. As it projects into the Oresund (the water channel between Denmark and Sweden) it is a good area for migrants, particularly in Spring - see http://www.dofbasen.dk/googlemap.php?loknr=101222 for a map. A bonus is that there are hardly any people around, even on a Sunday afternoon. An area like this in the UK would, I am sure, be full of dog walkers, motorbike scramblers, kite flyers and drunks (depending on the time of day!). But I saw only three fishermen in three hours. Birdwise, there were 4 juvenile Temminck's Stints (see above), 2 juvenile Red-backed Shrikes, 12 Rock Pipits, a few Wheatears, a Garden Warbler plus several Whitethroats and Lesser Whitethroats. Definitely worth a return visit in the autumn, me thinks...