Human-led migration 2017
Newsletter 28/08/2017
The day before yesterday, on August 26th, we arrived at the airfield in Thiene. After passing the Alps we now aim to fly across the Po-Valley. While during the first stages the weather was quite cold, we are now facing temperatures up to 35°C.
Two weeks ago, we started in Überlingen/Hödingen. With four flight stages, we covered a distance of 576 km, travelling in heights of up to 2400 m msl. Twice, a Golden Eagle attacked the formation during these flights; on time in the valley Vintschgau (west of Merano) and one time during the last flight between Bolzano and Trento. Fortunately, none of the attacks were successful and we didn´t lose any birds.
The first attack near Merano had consequences, though. Because of the presence of the eagle, our birds were quite nervous and lowered their flight level. We had no choice but to follow them with the microlights. At this low flight level, though, we could not enter the control zone of the Airport of Bolzano. While circling in an upwind, we lost contact to 23 of our birds. With the remaining seven birds we landed in Mölten near Bolzano at 1.250 m msl. The other birds returned within that day to Ried, our previous starting point, and were transferred to Mölten by car.
About 150 people welcomed us when we arrived in Thiene. During this migration journey, the public awareness and media coverage is very high. In the region of Thiene, this is of particular relevance. Our wild birds regularly migrate across this area and thus, unfortunately, face a high risk of illegal hunting. Last year, the male NBI `Tara´ was shot near the local airfield. The investigations in the case of Tara are still ongoing and we hope that the guilty will be identified. Our actual presence in the region causes a lot of public attention for our project and raises the awareness of the problem of illegal bird hunting.
On Tuesday August 29th, we aim to continue the journey with a flight to Valle Gaffaro, 90 km south of Venice. It is a rather short flight, but we will equip the birds with a new type of GPS data loggers. This should enable us to get more insight in the function and organization of different bird flight techniques. Our scientific manager Bernhard Völkl, together with our technician Christian Sperger, organizes the data collection.
Picture (C Esterer): Birds in flight in the area around Bolzano.
Click here to get to our Newsletter archive.