Пернатые хищники и их охрана (Oct 2018)

Juvenile Dispersal Movements of Eastern Imperial Eagles in the Resident Populations

  • Márton Horváth,
  • Tibor Juhász,
  • Imre Fatér,
  • Matthias Schmidt,
  • Michael Dvorak,
  • Beate Wendelin,
  • Gábor Wichmann,
  • Anita Gamauf,
  • Mike McGrady,
  • Rainer Raab,
  • Péter Spakovszky,
  • Stoycho Stoychev,
  • Dimitar A. Demerdzhiev,
  • Svetoslav D. Spasov,
  • Dobromir D. Dobrev,
  • Bernd-Ulrich Meyburg,
  • David Horal,
  • Ivan Literak,
  • Jozef Chavko,
  • Tomáš Veselovský,
  • Zuzana Guziová,
  • Natia Javakhishvili,
  • Burak Tatar,
  • Cansu Özcan,
  • Emanuel Lisichanets,
  • Hegyeli Zsolt,
  • Mátyás Prommer

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 0, no. 1
pp. 132 – 134

Abstract

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Satellite tracking became a frequently applied method for the study and conservation of raptors during the last decade, although the data derived from different projects are rarely analyzed together. Similarly Eastern Imperial Eagles (Aquila heliaca) have been tracked from several projects in eight countries in the western part of the distribution range from 2008 to 2018. The large eastern populations of the imperial eagles in Russia and Kazakhstan are migratory, while these western populations in Central-Europe, the Balkans, Anatolia and the Caucasus are thought to be resident. In the recent presentation our aim was to give an overview about these extensive tracking studies and to show the large-scale dispersal movement of immature imperial eagles from the different resident populations of the species. All together we gathered data of 171 satellite-tracked individuals, which tags provided more than 1.5 million locations of the individuals’ dispersal movements. The following number of specimens were tagged in the different countries: Hungary (74 spec, 2011–2018), Austria (26 spec, 2011–2018), Bulgaria (25 spec, 2008–2014), Georgia (15 spec, 2016–2018), Asian Turkey (11 spec, 2017–2018), Czech Republic (7 spec, 2017–2018), Slovakia (6 spec, 2017–2018), Macedonia (5 spec, 2013), European Turkey (2 spec, 2009). Both Argos/GPS (Microwave, NorthstarST) and GPS/GSM (Ecotone, Ornitella, Aquila) type tags were used. The tagging was financed by various sources, of which the most important ones were the EU LIFE Program, Bulgaria-Turkey and ETC-Coro-SKAT Cross-border cooperation program, MME BirdLife Hungary, windfarm companies and Technisches Büro für Biologie (Rainer Raab). The overview of the dispersal movements of immature imperial eagles showed, that the original theory that these populations were resident, was right in general, although a small fraction of individuals still showed clear southward migration movement at their first winter. Also it was shown that the site fidelity and natal philopatry was very high, as only a very small fraction of the individuals moved temporarily to the territory of other breeding populations and in all cases they returned to the natal population if they survived their journey.

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