Circaetus gallicus information navigator

Kunal Kambli in his recent post for The Weather Channel writes that Short-toed Eagle is among the species whose populations in India have declined in last years according to:

• SoIB 2020. State of India’s Birds, 2020: Range, trends and conservation status. The SoIB Partnership. Pp 50. – (En).

Unlike others, the population of Short-toeds in India is settled. Although, there are no more or less exact evaluations of its current size, it is undoubtedly significant, and the species is under highest legal protection in the country. However, the short- and long-term negative trends are ascertained on the background of the global population trend estimated as stable. This is a kind of unpleasant surprise and causes of the local population decline deserve to be figured out and analysed in details.

The following paper by Ivan Budinski established principles of the local Short-toed Eagle population monitoring program in Croatia:

• Ivan BUDINSKI, 2014 – Nacionalni program za monitoring zmijara (Circaetus gallicus) [National monitoring program for Short-toed Eagle] // Udruga BIOM. Zagreb: 10 p. – (Hr).

The author is one of Croatian researchers involved in the project of GPS tracking of Paško, the local young Short-toed Eagle. The map of the bird’s migratory movements is available online and regularly updated.

The study had been conducted in a region of Gibraltar /map/ in 2009-2012. Antonio-Román Muñoz presented some results at the Conference on Wind Power and Environmental Impacts Stockholm 5-7 Feb 2013. Also you can get general ideas about the main research directions of the group of Spanish biologists:

• Beatriz YÁÑEZ, Antonio-Román MUÑOZ, Beatriz MARTIN, Manuela DE LUCAS, Bert TOXOPEUS & Miguel FERRER, 2013 – Effects of wind farms on local and migratory populations of Short-toed Eagle Circaetus gallicus – (En) – presentation, 31 pages.

The presentation is available on a website of The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, as well as abstracts of the conference – (En).

This is just selection of links on miscellaneous texts and abstracts of articles about Short-toed Eagles. So…

Some abstracts can be found on the NCBI website with PubMed database:

• Sacchi P, Soglia D, Maione S, Meneguz G, Campora M, Rasero R, 2004 – A non-invasive test for sex identification in short-toed Eagle (Circaetus gallicus) // Mol Cell Probes, Jun 18 (3): 193-6. (En).

• Martin GR, Katzir G, 1999 – Visual fields in Short-toed Eagles, Circaetus gallicus (Accipitridae), and the function of binocularity in birds // Brain Behav Evol, 53 (2): 55-66. (En).

The encyclopedic compilation of information (Es) among other things has extensive ornithological bibliography concerning researching of Short-toed Eagle. The source is a site of the Enciclopedia Virtual de los Vertebrados Españoles.

Website about Short-toed Eagles in Gironde (France) /map/ contains different information (Fr): observations on the habits of adult birds and “circaètons”, some statistics data, photos etc. The subsections are being updated yearly. This site is filled with the original materials only.

Sergey Domashevsky’s article about Short-toed Eagle population of Kiev Region (Ukraine) /map/:

• С. В. Домашевский, 2005 – Распространение, численность и миграции змееяда (Circaetus gallicus) в Киевской области [Distribution, numbers and migrations of the Short-toed Eagle in Kiev Region] // Заповідна справа в Україні, 11 (1): 45-49. (Ru).

Its summary (En) and illustrations:

Some photos of Kiev Region’s Short-toed Eagles and their breeding places:

And a water-colour painting of flying Short-toed Eagle made by an artist Igor Zemlyanskih: