SakerLife News ›

An unusual case showed that the metal nest boxes, installed by BSPB/BirdLife Bulgaria to help the Saker Falcon, are very popular amongst birds of prey. An adult male Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) started to occupy such a nest box just a few minutes after its installation, before the man who mounted it was down from the pylon!

Two new Saker information boards were recently installed by the BSPB team in the frame of the LIFE+ “Saker conservation in NE Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia” project.  The sites where the boards were mounted – Cape Kaliakra at the Black Sea coast and the Center for Nature and Wildlife Protection in Dobrich – are not chosen by chance. Besides being located in the project region, these sites are often visited by the Saker Falcon, which can be seen there with a bit of luck, as well as by great number of Bulgarian and foreign tourists and nature enthusiasts. 

As a continuation of our trip in 2011, in the frame of the 2nd Saker conservation LIFE programme (LIFE NAT/H/000384), we visited again the Ukrainian steppes. The area is regularly visited by the juvenile satellite-tracked Sakers fledged in the Carpathian Basin and it has, therefore, a special importance for our Sakers in the early period of their life. 

Report on the 2nd expedition to Ukraine 2012 (PDF) >>

Barnabás is one of the two males which were marked by satellite transmitter in 2007 and their transmitter is still working. Barnabás after long roaming settled done in Czech Republic about 300 km far from his fledging site in Kisalföld towards North. An unsuccessful breeding last year was followed with a successful one this year in a Buzzard nest on a poplar tree. Five juveniles were fledged successfully from the nest. A male bird Tobias was marked with satellite transmitter in the last minutes before fledging.

Dear Friends around the Globe,
The eleven week reality show has concluded with the fledging of Samu and Hajnal.
Our juveniles have just started their own life with about four hundred other fellow birds. Their fledging happened to be ordinary, which I understand some might have expected to be different, as they were not taking off quickly from the nest in a way their parents do. But let’s just think about the uncertain steps children take before they actually start to walk, similarly, these birds also have to learn how to fly.