UBPRC – Ukrainian Birds of Prey Research Centre

Migrations of Saker Falcons with satellite transmitters: results of June – September 2011

We bring to your attention the first results of tracking the Saker Falcons, marked with satellite transmitters in the south of Ukraine in 2011. About the previous expedition on searching Saker’s nests and marking the birds read here.

As you probably remember from the earlier article, eight Saker’s chicks were marked in their nests, each of them got its own name.

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Authors of photos: M.Gavrilyuk, M.Prommer, V.Vetrov, Yu.Milobog

The male, named «Gagarin» was marked 1 June 2011 on Kerch Peninsula. Why ‘Gagarin’? There are several reasons of it. Yury Gagarin was the first spaceman and we wanted the chick’s flight to be distant and successful, and also the name of our leading saker’s expert in Ukraine is Yury (and he was born exactly on the Cosmonautics Day). So, could we give the chick any other name? Gagarin flew out of the nest already 5 June, but not far away; 11 June he flew for the distance of 100 m. At first he was staying in the vicinity of the nest and often returned into it. About a month he was keeping within the nesting area; after 10 July extended the territory of his flight over Kerch Peninsula; on 22 June went on an eastward trip around the Sea of Azov. It took for him a total of 5 days to fly over the sea and realize that ‘east or west the Crimea is best’. From late July until now he has chosen for himself rather a limited area on Tarkhankut Peninsula and stay there (map of movements).

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