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.