Greater Spotted Eagle

And on, and on, and on. And the autumn can easily be called black for our Greater Spotted Eagles. During the migration already 3 birds have been found dead.

The saddest (if one may graduate such things) was the death of Prosha as she had been in  the air for 4 years and we were hoping that maybe we would witness her first own nest. We shall not. She was found dead in Russia and the death causes remain unknown.

During the following week we have lost further 2 birds from this year: Tisha in Georgia and Kirya in Iran.

Of 9 birds tagged recent years in Russia only 3 are still alive, including two tagged this year. Despite the fact, that by some the death causes remain unknown, it can easily be said that all of them were of antropogenic type (shooting, electrocution, poisoning). So totally unnecessary and useless.

Under these circumstances I am unsure whether it is appropriate to mention, that the Aquila loggers play crucial role in documenting such cases. And that afterwards they are being reused only to continue on the documenting... Wouldn't blissfull ignorance be better?

Another sad news, this time from Israel. Boyetz - wintering Greater Spotted Eagle, was found dead on March 12^th.

Boyetz was fitted with Aquila datalogger as a juvenile bird in summer 2019 in the Moscow District, Russia. Spent each winter in Israel. Unfortunatelly this year already in January his logger did not register any movements, therefore Russian scientists contacted local ornithologist for help. Since the logger was active, they had no problems finding the body.

In 2019 four Greater Spotted Eagles were fitted with our loggers within the project. Untli now only one bird has survived.

The results of long-year studies on the European population of the Greater Spotted Eagles Aquila clanga were recently published. This time the aim was to reseach the migration strategies. Aquila dataloggers were used within the studies.

The publication can be viewed here.

Unfortunately a sad news - one of the Russian Greater Spotted Eagles did not survive the migration. The bird named Zadhira was born last year and while in the nest was tagged with our 25g unit. Spent the winter on the Arabic Peninsula and then headed east, visiting Kuwait. Further east he reached the Zagrs Mountains which forced him to turn north. Unfortunately this journey did not last long. Soon after the logger started sending coordinates from one point only and after a week the body was found under a power line.

The only positive aspect is the international cooperation that took place in order to find the bird. That is extraordinary how people of different nations, cultures and religions can cooperate together. Neither CIA, FBI nor CNN would do it faster, more efficient and, above all, pleasant. Thank you all who contributed to that!

The winter is over. Strange one as it was very mild. This year birds return to their breeding grounds earlier than usually. However Greater Spotted Eagles seem unaffected by the situation. Which is nothing strange. We have had winters when individual birds wintered even i Poland.