Two sooty falcons in Madagascar.

On 21 December, ديماني Daymani made the jump and crossed the Mozambique Strait to Madagascar.  This is about 15 days after فحل Fahal made the crossing,  Both are now in western Madagascar. and appear to be making their way south.  ديماني Daymani is now in the same area visited by فحل  Fahal 5 days earlier. فحل  Fahal in now south of Morandava.

ديماني Daymani was transmitting during part of the ocean crossing, and on average he travelled at 43.6 km/hr.

Locations of two sooty falcons during the two weeks prior to 23 December 2014.

Baobab trees and zebu near Morandava

Fahal in Madagascar, Daymani nearly so

Sometime during 4-6 December, Fahal فحل crossed the Mozambique Straits to Madagascar.  She is currently about 40 km NW of the capital, Antananarivo.

130393 (Daymani ديماني ) is located just inland from the coastal town of Moma, Mozambique, and heading SE.

Movements of Fahal and Daymani during 20 November-10 December 2014.

Heading south

Two sooty falcons continue to push toward Madagascar,  Daymani ديماني, a juvenile bird, is located in southern Tanzania about 70 km north of Lake Malawi near the town of Makambuko, and is heading SE toward the coast.  Fahal فحل, an adult, reached the Mozambique coast just across from Madagascar, but then turned north and is currently just inside the Tanzania border near the town of Mtwara.   The route taken last year by our tracked bird was very similar.  Click here to see the movements of that bird in late December 2013.  Below is an aerial photo of Mtwara.

Mtwara from the air.

Sooty Falcons in Tanzania

Two of our sooty falcons are now in southern Tanzania فحل Fahal is about 250 km from the coast, and ديماني Daymani is located between Lake Malawi and Lake Rukwa.  If they keep up this pace they will arrive in Madagascar a full month before birds from last year.

Locations of two sooty falcons in late November 2014.

It doesn't look so good for our other tagged birds.  عويسي Owaisi was last heard on 6 November in southern Ethiopia.   قبس Qabas, جناح, Janah and Ivato are all sending static signals from southern Ethiopia-northern Kenya.  We are hoping that colleagues in these areas might help us find the tags/birds and determine the fate of the birds. Without trying to speculate, most of our birds/tags have gone "missing" in East Africa.  The only bird whose fate is precisely known is one that was shot in Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010.

Sooty falcons in East Africa

So, all the birds are now in Africa, and have been for the last week.  In recent days they have slowed their migration. Presumably, this is because they have found places where food is relatively abundant and they are foraging.  You might recall that last year the birds we were tracking did the same thing:  they flew to East Africa and then their pace of migration slowed. Additionally, the single juvenile we are tracking, Daymani, is farther north than any of the adults, near Tana Lake in northern Ethiopia (See picture below).  Daymani's path is more similar to the juveniles we tracked last year and may suggest a pattern in which juveniles take a more circuitous route to the wintering grounds in Madagascar than the adults  As for the adults, Qabas is about 120 km SW of the Kenyan border town of Rhanu.Owaisi is about about 150 km NE of that town, but still in Ethiopia.  Fahal is about 40 km east of Lake Turkana in Kenya, and Janah is about 50 km south of Maslo, Ethiopia.  Ivato, the falcon we fitted with a transmitter in February in Madagascar, and who spent the breeding season in Ethiopia is about 40 km north of Tarba in Kenya.  Click on the map below to enlarge it.

Movement of sooty falcons in early November 2014.

Lake Tana, Ethiopia, where Daymani, a juvenile sooty falcon from Oman, has spent early November 2014.

All birds on the move, some in Africa already

It wasn't so long ago that the sooty falcon migration started in Oman, and now all the birds fitted with satellite transmitters have left the breeding grounds and are headed south. At the moment, of the Oman birds, one bird is in Saudi Arabia, one is in Yemen, one is in Ethiopia and two are in Somalia.  Ivato, having most of the past 3 weeks just north of Asmara, Eritrea, has now moved south and is in eastern Ethiopia.  See the map below.  If you click on the map, it should open up larger in a separate window.

Movements of six sooty falcons during October 2014

More migration

Three sooty falcons fitted with satellite tags have left the breeding grounds in Oman.  We have given them names.  Owaisi عويسي is an adult female that is currently about 200 km SE of Seiyun, Yemen.  Janah جناح is also an adult female that is near the Yemeni coastal town of Qishn.  Daymani ديماني is a young bird (about 2 months old) and is currently about 40 km NE of Ibri.  The map below shows the birds names and the number of their satellite tag. We'll post more soon.

Tracks of three sooty falcons that have left the breeding grounds in Oman.

Migration has started!

Today an adult sooty falcon fitted with a satellite transmitter (140655) started on migration.  It appeared to leave its breeding area around first light, and initially headed north.  By early afternoon local time it was located about 40 km NE of Fahud.

Movements of a third year sooty falcon as it starts on migration in 2014.

The map of its movements show some other features about tracking such small falcons. Because of weight constraints we are unable to use gps tracking technology on these small birds.  As a result, the location of the bird is not always very accurately estimated.  In the picture above, the location away to the NE from the islands is probably an inaccurate location and the bird probably did not fly out there.

Also, Ivato, the bird tagged in Madagascar last spring which spent the summer on the islands of Eritrea started migration.  That bird moved away from where it spent the summer on 12 October.  By 14 October it was located north of Asmara near the town of Filfil.  Here is what Wikipedia says about Filfil: "Filfil is a town in Eritrea, lying north of Asmara. Based on plantations, it is known for its surrounding rainforest and its animals. It is also within one of Eritrea's protected national forests."  If you look closely at the satellite image, you can see that the area in which it has spent the last 10 days is rather green in comparison to the surrounding areas. Ivato is not moving a lot, so there must be food, either small birds or insects.

Ivato's movements during the 20 days prior to 26 October 2014

More birds tagged

This year we have fitted 5 more satellite transmitters to sooty falcons, 4 adults and one juvenile.  Right now they are all near their nesting places as we are right in the middle of the fledging period, with some young birds flying and others set to take off in the next days.  Below is a picture of the juvenile bird.  Its mother also has a transmitter.

Juvenile sooty falcon with satellite transmitter, alphanumeric and microchip rings

These birds will likely not leave for their wintering grounds until November or so.  While we are waiting, we'll try to give you some information so you can better understand the birds and the maps you will see.  Below is a map of the movements of the five birds.  As you can see they cluster around the islands, but they also seem to move around a bit.  One bird seems to have made at least one visit to the mainland.  This is not unlikely because that bird is an adult female,and her three young are hungry and flying.  So, she might be ranging wider in search of food.

Also, you will notice that the spread of locations is greater east to west than north to south.  That is an artifact of the satellites that track these birds.  These are not gps tags because gps tags would be too heavy for the falcons. These 12 g tags use the Argos satellite system, and those satellites orbit over the poles.  This means that the potential for inaccuracy is greater in the east to west direction than the north to south.

Locations of sooty falcons fitted with satellite transmitters.

The breeding season

We're giving you a break from the usual set of maps. That's because the maps that we have from the last month really don't show very much. Ivato, the falcon fitted with a transmitter in Madagascar last February, has stayed on a small island in Eritrea (look at earlier blog posts if you missed that bit of news). The four breeding birds we fit with satellite transmitters in Oman in August appear to be doing just fine.  They are probably busy raising chicks right now, so we really don't expect them to move very far until November or December.  Below is a picture of a sooty falcon with  a transmitter in August

Fitting a sooty falcon with a satellite transmitter

We will be commencing our next round of field work in about 10 days, then in October we will be surveying Musandam for breeding falcons.  On the face of it Musandam looks very promising, but no one has reported many sooty falcons there.  We don't know whether that lack of records is a result of little effort or low numbers of falcons.  I guess we'll have a better idea by the end of October.  

Some Good News and Some Bad News

First the good news...

Since our last post (which was over a month ago !... we have been busy in the field!), a lot has happened.

Ivato, the bird we marked in Madagascar last February has seemed to settle on a small island in Eritrea.  If you look back over the last months, he has made a number of trips from that island to the mainland, but in the last month he has stayed put...more or less.  Below is a map of his movements over the last 20 days.  We still don't know whether Ivato was a breeder this year. The time he spent away from the breeding are seems to suggest that he was not breeding.

Ivato's movements during August 2014.

The other good news is that we completed another egg-stage bout of field work on the breeding grounds in Oman.  During that work we managed to capture a number of falcons, some of which we have caught before.  One bird we have captured every year since 2008, and at that time she was an adult, so she must be at least 9 yrs old. We also captured a bird that we ringed as a chick in 2007, so that one is at least 7.  During our field work we also fitted four adult birds with satellite transmitters, and they are all apparently doing well.

Abdulrahman and Mansoor with a transmittered sooty falcon.

 They are all busy taking care of chicks we think, so they have not moved far from their breeding places.  They'll start to move, most likely in November.  Below is a map of their movements since they were fitted with tags. We'll be commencing our nestling stage work in about 3 weeks, and we will report on those activities in due course.  Keep visiting the blog.

Satellite tracking of four adult sooty falcons during August 2014.

Now for the bad news...  Sadly, around the 1 August, the sooty falcon that we have been tracking since last year died.  Just a few days before dying the bird returned to Oman, flew to UAE and then returned again to a place near Yibal.  We were able to use the satellite locations to go into the desert and find it. What we found did not give us much of a clue as to why it died.  By the time we retrieved the bird, the carcass was quite dried out, and we could not see any obvious injuries, nor could we see if it was thin.  We found it in a shallow wadi very far from humans near a Prosopis (Ghaf) tree, and it was half buried by drifting sand.  Below is a map of where the bird was finally located.  Although we say this is bad news, really it is more sad than bad news.  Mortality in this species may be naturally high, especially during the first year, and in most cases we never retrieve the bird (or the transmitter).  In this case we can confirm 100% that the bird died, and we will be able to fit the tag to another sooty falcon this autumn.

The red dot is where we found 130393

130393 est de retour à Oman

Depuis quelques jours, précisément le 25 juillet 2014, l'individu juvénile 130393 est déjà rentré à Oman, son pays d'origine, après quelques mois d’hibernation en Afrique et Madagascar. A rappeler que cet individu est parti d’Oman au début du mois de novembre 2013, puis arrivé à Madagascar vers la fin de décembre 2013 en passant par quelques pays d’Afrique. Son passage au niveau de la grande île est marqué par leur déplacement spectaculaire dans la partie Sud. Puis, il l’a quitté en début du mois de mai 2014. 

L’hibernation de cet individu a pris fin cette année. Nous souhaitons qu’il reprenne le même voyage l’année prochaine.

صغير الصقر الادهم يعود إلى السلطنة بعد الهجرة إلى مدغشقر

عاد صغير الصقر الادهم إلى السلطنة بعد رحلة هجرته إلى مدغشقر.  غادر هذا الصقر الصغير السلطنة في بداية نوفمبر ٢٠١٣م ووصل إلى مدغشقر في نهاية ديسمبر ٢٠١٣م حيث مكث أربعة أشهر بجمهورية مدغشقر وبعدها غادرها إلى القارة الافريقية حيث قضى معظم وقته في أثيوبيا واريتريا. والان يعود إلى أرض السلطنة بعد حوالي تسعة أشهر من مغادرته لجزيرة الفحل مكان مولده حيث تم تركيب جهاز تعقب عبر الاقمار الاصطناعية من قبل فريق الدراسات البحثية بمكتب حفظ البيئة ومؤسسة أبحاث الطيور الدولية بالنمسا وبمشاركة باحثين من مدغشقر من صندوق حماية صقر الشاهين.

والجدير بالذكر أن فريقا من السلطنة زار جمهورية مدغشقر في فبراير ٢٠١٤م وعمل مسوحات في أرجاء مختلفة حيث شاهدوا مئات من الصقر الادهم على أشجار الباوباب واليوكاليبتوس والصنوبر وخصوصا في موراندافو. وكذلك تم تركيب جهاز تعقب على صقر ادهم بالغ بمطار أيفاتو بعاصمة مدغشقر انتاناريف وهو الان أيضا مهاجر حيث وصل الى اريتريا. وتم خلال الزيارة توعية السكان حول أهمية صون الصقر الادهم.

كما تجدر الاشارة إلى أنه في أغسطس  ٢٠١٤م يستمر عمل المسوحات للصقر الادهم بجزر بحر عمان (جزيرة الفحل والديمانيات) ونتطلع لعمل مسوحات في مسندم. كما يخطط فريق الدراسات بتتبع ستة صقور بالغة باجهزة التعقب عبر الاقمار الاصطناعية هذا العام.

د. منصور بن حمد الجهضمي

المشرف على الدراسة البحثية للصقر الادهم

صغير الصقر الادهم يعود إلى السلطنة بعد الهجرة إلى مدغشقر 

صقر أدهم بالغ

صغير الصقر الادهم وعليه جهاز التعقب عبر الاقمار الاصطناعية بعيد تركيبة بجزيرة الفحل في اكتوبر ٢٠١٣م

Mid July 2014

Ivato has moved back to the island in the Dahlak Archipelago where he was 2 weeks ago.  This is the second time we saw him move away his presumed breeding island to areas along the Eritrean-Ethiopian borders.  Presumably the motivation for this is food (the island has little, I guess).  It would be interesting to know whether Ivato is in fact a breeder or just an adult "floater".  I don't know which would be more interesting.  Globally almost nothing is known about the floating population of raptors in any species.  If he is in deed a breeder these data would show an interesting behaviour of foraging remotely from the breeding site over many days in the weeks running up to breeding.  If he continues to move away from the island over the summer, then I would make the educated guess that he is a floater, and that he may have returned to the area where he was raised to try to find a place in the breeding population.  Even if he is not a breeder, I'd guess he might return here next year.

Ivato's movement from the Dahlak island to the Eritrean-Ethiopian border and back in early July 2014.

130393 has remained in the area of the Eritrean-Ethiopian border and is currently about 15 km west of the town of Senafe, Eritrea.  The behaviour of this bird and Ivato suggest that this area along the border, which is the transition to the Ethiopian Highlands and is where the Mareb River is located, and may be an area of relative prey abundance.

Movements of 130393 along the Ethiopian-Eritrean border in early and mid July 2014.

Mid-July...another surprise

During the last two weeks we have not monitored the movement of the tagged sooty falcons very closely, so we were surprised to see that the adult bird marked in Madagascar had moved (again!) from its presumed breeding area on an island in the Dahlak Archipelago back onto the mainland and back to an area it visited in previous months along the Eritrea-Ethiopia border.  Look back at the past blog posts to see earlier visits to this area.  At the moment this bird, "Ivato" is about 25 km east of Badme.

Movements of 135213 during the first half of July 2014.

The bird fitted with a satellite tag in Oman last summer (130393) is also in the same area, just NW of Adrigat.  This bird has spent much of its time since leaving its wintering grounds on Madagascar in the border area of Madagascar-Sudan-Ethiopia.   Back in the autumn of last year, we lost a bird during migration not far from Adrigat.  The two birds are about 90 km from one another.

Movements of 130393 during the first half of July 2014.

Late June

Well, after spending more than a month away, Ivato has headed back to the island in the Dahlak Archipelago, Eritrea, where we think he breeds.  Egg laying should start in about a month, so we expect Ivato to dwell in this area until late October, at least.  However, he has surprised us before.  130393 is still moving around northern Ethiopia, where we suspect, and friends from Ethiopia, confirm that locusts and termites are likely abundant.  Just to remind you... 130393 is now about 11 months old, and we don't expect it to breed in this year.  One of the "mysteries" of sooty falcons (and lots of birds for that matter) is what they do before becoming breeders.  Whatever he does, it will be new information.

Movements of satellite tracked sooty falcons during 4-24 June. Red = Juvenile (130393) marked in Oman in 2013, Blue = Adult (Ivato) marked in Madagascar in early 2014.

Ethiopia (and Sudan) is the place to be

Both birds have spent the last three weeks or so in the border area of northern Ethiopia-Sudan.  It was amazing how similar the movements of the two birds were.  They moved across northern Ethiopia, the southwest along the border, and have more recently moved NE, sometimes being only a matter of 20-30 km apart from one another.

Movements of the two satellite tracked sooty falcons in the border region of Ethiopia and Sudan during late May and early June 2014.

Early June

130393 and Ivato continue to stay away from breeding areas, and both have moved south and west since the last transmission cycle. 130393 is currently located west of Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and Ivato is currently WSW of there near Al-Damezin, the capital of Blue Nile Province, Sudan.  We speculate that the reason for this is that these areas have prey for them (and the breeding areas have relatively little).  When one looks at the satellite images for these areas, they appear to be laced with the rivers of the Ethiopian Highlands and the headwaters of the Nile.  Perhaps insects are in abundance.

Locations in early June of sooty falcons tagged with satellite transmitters.

Où vont-ils aller?

Du moment où les individus du Faucon concolore ont quitté Madagascar, nous avons estimé que, tout au moins, celui capturé à Oman (130393) va y retourner. Mais la réalité dit autrement. Alors que la période de reproduction se rapproche, il est encore en Ethiopie maintenant. C’est probablement à cause de son jeune âge. Cet individu est encore immature. Ainsi, il ne se précipite pas de rentrer ou il pourrait changer définitivement de site. Mais nous pensons que sa présence en Ethiopie est liée à l’abondance de proies.

Pour l’autre individu capturé à Ivato (135213), en fait, nous ne savons pas d’où vient cet individu. C’est à partir de cette étude que nous découvrirons son pays d’origine et son site de reproduction. Les données satellitaires ont révélé qu’il est au sud de Soudan actuellement, précisément à 700 SW de l’Archipel de Dahlak où nous spéculons que c’est son endroit de prédilection. 

Leur surprenant voyage se poursuit toujours et nous avons hâte de découvrir leur destination finale. Ce que nous venons d’avancer n’est que de la supposition. On ne sait jamais ce que le lendemain nous réserve.