Satellite tracking of Eurasian Hobbies

5 gms and counting, wonderful stuff, do check out the link, shows how important Miombo woodland is to this bird.
It took us several years to realise how important our western and SE miombo is to this species. Not until you see them concentrating on roost sites do you realise just how many there can be in any given area.

Neil

----- Original Message -----
From: WWGBP@aol.com
To: AfricanBirding@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 12:07 AM
Subject: [AfricanBirding] Satellite tracking of Eurasian Hobbies


Dear all,

The Eurasian Hobby is a small falcon. It breeds
across Europe and Asia and is a long-distance
migrant. European birds winter in Africa. More than
5,700 Hobbies have been ringed in 10 European
countries, but so far there have been only two ring
recoveries south of the Sahara desert. Satellite
tracking using the Argos system is now an accepted
technique for long distance migration studies of
birds. It is generally accepted that any device we
burden a bird with should weigh no more than 3% of
the bird’s weight if we are not to affect its behavior.

Method

The prototype of the smallest satellite transmitter
(PTT) produced so far weighing just 5 g was fitted by me for
the first time to an adult female Hobby (weight 265 g)
on 9 August 2008 in Germany near Berlin and
successfully recorded the annual migration route.
The Hobby had raised two offspring and was trapped
near its eyrie using the dho-ghaza-method. This new
type of solar-powered PTT was still in the trial phase
and is still working (in August 2009).

Results

This smallest and lightest satellite transmitter
produced to date delivered astoundingly high
numbers of good Argos Doppler fixes (LC:2 and
LC:3).

After leaving on migration in the second week of
August, and a short rest period on the island of Elba
off the west coast of Italy from 6 to 13 September,
the bird flew at first in a southerly direction towards
North Africa. The falcon held this course more or less
until reaching its main wintering area in Southern
Angola on 17 October. The migration to southern
Angola took 49 days including some days on the
island of Elba and one day (8 October) in Cameroon
when the falcon was not moving. On average the
falcon migrated 174 km per day including the days
when it did not migrate.

Map: Outward migration route in 2008 up to the southernmost
point in Zimbabwe not showing local movements during
wintering in Angola. Copyright by B.-U. Meyburg, 2009

A summary of the results with further details has recently been presented
at the 7th Conference of the European Ornithologists' Union 2009:

K.D. Fiuczynski, P. W. Howey, C. Meyburg & B.-U. Meyburg (2009):
Intercontinental migration of an Eurasian Hobby (Falco subbuteo) tracked by means of a
5g satellite transmitter. 7th Conference of the European Ornithologists'
Union 2009, University of Zurich, Switzerland, 21 - 26 August 2009. Poster.
(see: http://www.raptor-research.de/pdfs/a_sp100p/a_sp140.pdf &
www.Raptor-Research.de).

In July and August 2009 I have been able to trap eight more adult Hobbies
and mark them with even smaller solar-powered satellite tags (size: 9.3 x
30 x 16.4 mm ). From these transmitters we already received much better
results during the last few weeks in the breeding area than from the first PTT in
2008. One surprising result has been an adult female which migrated 300 kms
north from her breeding site after the fledging of her offspring to reach
the coast of the Baltic Sea in western Poland.

Many people have been very helpful in searching for nests and helping with
trapping the falcons, especially André Hallau. The transmitters are still
experimental and are not available for sale.

Kind regards,

Bernd Meyburg

Prof. Dr. Bernd-U. Meyburg

Wangenheimstr. 32
D-14193 BERLIN
GERMANY
E-mail: BUMeyburg@aol.com
Work Fax: ++49-30-892 80 67
Private Fax: ++49-30-89 50 21 55
Mobile phone: ++49-172-38 38 084
www.Raptor-Research.de
www.Raptors-International.de