UBPRC – Ukrainian Birds of Prey Research Centre

Informational site (selected stuff)

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.

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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The International Expedition in Eastern Kazakhstan Region (Balkhash Аrea)

During April – June 2011 I had the opportunity to conduct ornithological fieldworks in Kazakhstan. The expedition was organized under support of the International Fund for for Houbara Conservation (IFHC) and participated by representatives of France, UAE, Morocco, India, China, Africa, Hungary, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Great Britain. The main objective was to study the […]

International expedition to study the Saker Falcon in the south of Ukraine

31.05-6.06.2011 a joint Ukrainian-Hungarian-Romanian expedition trip to study the Saker Falcon in the south of Ukraine was carried out. The main purpose was to mark Saker’s chicks with satellite transmitters to investigate their It is the first project in Ukraine dedicated to satellite telemetry of birds of prey. Photo: M.Prommer, M.Gavrilyuk, V.Vetrov, H.Torok As we […]

Monitoring of the White-tailed Eagle population in the Middle Dnieper area

Monitoring of populations of rare Falconiformes is an important tool to organize protection of these birds. For this purpose we have developed the Monitoring Programme for the Birds of Prey of Ukraine. One of the Programme directions is long-term tracking of the White-tailed Eagle population. We initiated the monitoring of the White-tailed Eagle population in […]

New issue of journal «Strepet» published

The new number of Stepet journal has been published. – 2010. – Vol. 8, Iss. 2. The journal includes the following publications on birds of prey: • Belik V.P. Short-toed Eagle in the North Caucasus // С. 34-59. [in Russian] • Efimenko N.N. Short-toed Eagle in Turkmenistan: distribution, breeding ecology, current numbers and conservation // […]

Results of spring counts in the alienated zone of Chornobyl Atomic Power Station (CAPS) in March 2011

This work continues of our studies of birds of prey fauna in the alienated zone of Chornobyl Atomic Power Station. The Chornobyl alienated zone always attracts researches with its wild surroundings almost deprived of traces of human activity, and with abundance of various groups of animals and birds. We used a chance to realize our […]

Results of counts of wintering birds of prey in 2011 in the Central Dnieper area

In January-February 2011 we have carried out counts of birds of prey to monitor their numbers. The counts covered districts of Cherkasy, Chyhyryn and Kaniv (Cherkasy region), as well as Svitlovodsk district (Kirovohrad region) and Kremenchuh district (Poltava region). Three counts were conducted in agrolandscapes using an automobile. Additive data were received during field visits […]