Troubled times
Newsletter 24/07/2021
In Seekirchen am Wallersee, Land Salzburg, we have a group of 30 young birds who are now super trained. Therefore, we planned a first big flight to Fuschlsee and Mondsee for last Wednesday. A French film crew had arrived on Tuesday to film this circular flight.
But all this did not happen. One of the two foster mothers had mild symptoms and an antigen test indicated a COVID infection. A PCR test brought certainty: positive result despite double vaccination.
In agreement with the authorities, the camp was immediately closed, and the team reduced to the necessary minimum. In the meantime, there is a second COVID case among us, both foster mothers are now infected.
We hope for a relatively gentle and mild course of the disease due to the vaccination protection. And we remain optimistic about the course of the project. From today's point of view, flight training can be continued by the beginning of August in order to start towards the winter area on August 17th as planned. We will implement comprehensive measures to protect all team members from further infections before and during the migration. Among other things, the camp will be permanently closed to visitors this year without exception. We hope for your understanding and ask everyone to keep their fingers crossed for us!
But there is also more positive news to report. In the three breeding areas, the wild birds have fledged. In Burghausen we have 14 fledged young birds in 5 nests, in Kuchl 15 fledged young birds in 5 nests and in Überlingen 7 fledged young birds in 3 nests already in the first breeding year.
On average, we had 2.8 fledged young birds per nest, which is a comparatively very good value. According to an analysis recently submitted for publication, the reproduction rate in our project in the period 2012 - 2019 was on average 2.15 fledglings per nest. In the same period, this value was 1.23 in the wild colony in Morocco and 0.97 in the sedentary colony in Andalusia.
The fledged young birds in the breeding areas are currently being marked and equipped with GPS transmitters. This is a laborious undertaking as these young birds, raised in the wild, are not used to humans. They have to be attracted with a remote-controlled mealworm dispenser in the feeding meadows and then caught with a folding net. Marking and tagging is important to ensure continuous monitoring of the population and in particular to be able to further implement targeted measures against the main causes of death. In addition, feather samples are collected from the captured young birds in order to be able to determine their sex through DNA analysis.
Photo: Currently some clouds show up on the horizon during flight training at Wallersee, but the sun will surely come through again. Photo J Fritz.