Circaetus gallicus information navigator

These fragments of Short-toed Eagles’ flights have been shot at their breeding territories and hunting grounds in Kiev Region /map/ and in Mizhrichynskyi Park /map/ this year. The video is commented on, please, pay attention on subtitles. You can see eagles A11, B11, K11 and L11 in the clip. Certainly, also other more melodious names were given them for routine use. These STEs occupy their breeding sites within the same home ranges from year to year since at least 2006 and 2010. For a regular observer every bird has obvious individual traits. The video without compression can be downloaded.

These articles were published in 2012-2013. They all are dedicated to studies of migration of Short-toed Eagles. Now the full texts can be found on a site of Mediterranean Raptor Migration Network, on the section of papers:

A fossil representative of the Circaetus genus was discovered in South-Western Bulgaria /map/. The birds had already lived in ancient Europe more than 7 millions of years ago; although, their origin from Africa is suggested as very probable. The paper is available on a website of the journal Acta zoologica bulgarica:

• Z. Boev, 2012 – Circaetus rhodopensis sp. n. (Aves: Accipitriformes) from the Late Miocene of Hadzhidimovo (SW Bulgaria) // Acta zool. bulg., 64 (1): pp. 5-12. – (En).

The northern part of Chernihiv Region, so-called the Chernihiv Polissya /map/, is one of the best regions of Ukraine for Short-toed Eagles’ habitation. These lands, rich in Grass Snakes, Vipers, other reptiles and also in old pine forests, provide the eagles with good conditions for foraging and nesting. An expert in Ukrainian birds of prey, Sergey Domashevsky, during the expedition in 2009 has recorded several probable territorial pairs of the eagles there. Some of them were observed between the Sozh, the Dnieper rivers and Zamglay Bog /map/.

This year a local birdwatcher, Artem Skeeter, has found Short-toed Eagles’ nest at a place where he saw them during a few years before. Artem has discovered the nest just after finding of one old tail feather under a perch at the breeding site. He has managed to take a video of feeding the juvenile eagle by its father on a pine within the site. Also photos of the birds have been taken there in 2011-2012 and this year by Artem and by Andrew Simon, Viktor Moroz and me. This year’s juvenile could already fly on August 9. The date is the earliest known in Northern Ukraine for the last 10 years. On September 9 another juvenile Short-toed Eagle, judging by all, an offspring of the neighbour pair, was observed in the hovering flight over typical hunting grounds far from forests, that is unusually early for this region too.

Two new works of Short-toed Eagle researchers are available on the Web now. Please, find the abstracts on the following pages:

This is just a small photo gallery of ringing Short-toed Eagle chicks in the Zemplén Mountains /map/. The juveniles were ringed by István Béres; the climber and the photographer was József Serfőző.

Gábor Papp reports that 4 eaglets were colour-ringed there this year and also ringing of 2 more was orginized by Zoltán Turny (MME/Birdlife) in Transdanubia /map/ and was done by rangers of Danube-Ipoly National Park at the following sites:
› Vértes – by Antal Klébert and István Staudinger; this is the 2^nd year that the pair use this nest on an oak;
› the Budai Hills – by Bíró Sándor and Zoltán Turny; this is the 4^th year in a row of breeding in this nest on a pine.

One more contribution from Guilad Friedemann. This time it is a video presentation. Using Google Earth tools Guilad invites us to follow David, one of the Short-toed Eagles tagged with the special GPS-loggers, from his home range in the Judean Foothills /map/ to the wintering grounds in Sudan. The virtual tour on his migration route is amazing!