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Thursday, May 8, 2014

Early May 2014

Well, Ivato has now spent two transmission cycles (more that 4 days) on Romiya Islet, a small island (about 1.5 km x 1 km) in the Dahlak Archipelago in Eritrea. It seems this may be where he will breed, and is probably where he has bred ever since he started to breed.  We are trying to contact people in Eritirea who can give us more information about the area.  The Dahlak Archipelago is a known breeding area.  It is probably of global importance, but details about the number of falcons breeding there are not available.  If anyone knows anything about the area or Romiya, please leave a comment.
Ivato's movements during 20 April - 8 May 2014.
 The bird marked as a fledgling last October in Oman is still heading north, and is currently in northern Kenya, west of the town of Wajir and Habaswein. To get a feeling for the environment there it is good to know that "Habaswein" means "a lot of dust" in the local language.  Ivato was not far from this location back in early April 2014 (See earlier post).

130393's movements since reaching the African mainland

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2 comments:

  1. UmbertoMay 12, 2014 at 5:23 PM

    The Dalahk Archpelago is a well known breeding site for the Sooty falcon. That's where Heuglin found the fist ever described nests of the species. The archeplago has been visited by several other researchers since, including: Smith (1957) "Recorded Cheren, Anseba and from the islands of Dahlac and Dissie"; Clapman (1964) says that the species is "a common breeding bird on most of the islands" he visited but he did not visited Romiya. His estimated the total population (in the islands he visited in 166 pairs. Urban and Boswell, reported the presence since March in the archipelago and of 'tens' observed by Aboulafia in Museri island during breeding period.
    According to Semere es at (Semere, D., Hagos, T., Seleba, G., Gebrezgabhier, Y., Haile, Z., Chiozzi, G. & De Marchi, G. 2008. The status of breeding seabirds and waterbirds on the Eritrean Red Sea islands. Bulletin of the African Bird Club 15:228-237) the island of Romiya hosts 60 pairs of Sooty falcon.
    Given the high numbers of islands noboby has done a complete survey of the archipelago. Assuming no changes in the last 50 years we could add all published records non overlapping and we reach almost 280 pairs for the Dalahk archipelago, representing 15-20% of the estinmated global population.

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    Replies
    1. MikeMay 15, 2014 at 10:08 AM

      I have tried to contact potential Eritrean collaborators, but have had no real luck. Do you have any contacts there?

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