The Flight of Life

For earth- and country-bound creatures like us a trip from Eastern Europe to Sub-Saharan Africa relying on our strength alone might seem one of unimaginable difficulties. For a bird that has been taking this trip for generations it is not necessarily so. Or at least it shouldn't be. Probably more out ignorance than of jealousy we have managed to make the trip for migratory birds harder. A new study by LOB funded by Latvian Environmental Protection Fund and Max Plank Institute for Ornithology will follow eight Black Stork females from the nests where they hatched to the wintering areas and, hopefully, back.

It is estimated that since early 1990s the breeding population of Black Storks in Latvia has declined by half. One of the obvious and for now the only scientifically proven reason for this is the intensification of forestry (degradation of habitat, disturbance etc.). However, there are other potential dangers for the species, and not all of them are here in Latvia. The mission of these eight Black Storks will be to shed more light on the threats the species has to face.

The TV channel LNT that supports this project has called it "The Flight of Life". Though less hopeful and probably less appealing to public but much more appropriate name would be "The Flight of Death". It is no accident that female Black Storks have been chosen for the study. Our current data show that at the age of more than 100 days the proportion of females in the population is 20% instead of 50% it should be. If this is true, it is alarming news for the Black Stork population and even more so for the eight storks that are followed on their way to Africa. Chances of their safe arrival home are actually rather slim.

One of the potential dangers that lurks somewhere in Africa (but probably not only there) we do know but haven't proven the impact on the population yet is DDT. This notorious insecticide has been banned in Europe for several decades, and when you mention it to someone in Latvia now the response you usually get is: "What is DDT?" But it is still being used in Africa. We don't know where they get it, we have pretty good notion on how, but anyway Black Storks contract DDT poisoning. All of the unhatched eggs tested for DDT and the products of its decomposition in recent years have been positive.

We hope that Guste, Dace, Dora, Mellene, Agnese, Tince, Santa and Oga will return to Latvia safely and with some answers. Their journey has just begun. Let's allow ourselves a moment of optimism and naiveté and hope it will be a flight of life after all. Those wishing to follow their trip can look them up in Movebank.

The lovable killer

Starting a blog and then falling silent for three months is probably not the best way of attracting readers. I will try to be more productive in the future, but I guess the readers of this blog will understand that spring and the beginning of summer is a hectic time for an ornithologist and, I'm afraid, writing a blog in English is far from priority.

The peak of the breeding season has passed, reports for various counts and studies (almost) completed, so why not return to my blog. And this time, though to some extent I continue the topic of death, I decided to write something optimistic and focus on my pet project: research of Hoopoes.

From the strategic point of view Hoopoe is downright unimportant species for bird conservation in Latvia. Though the bird is rare (160-250 breeding pairs) and therefore it is included in the national list of specially protected species, the breeding population is doing fine. The rarity of the species is simply due to the fact that Latvia lies almost on the northern border of the range of Hoopoe (north from us they breed only in Estonia). Being common elsewhere Hoopoe is also not listed in the Annex I of Birds Directive (i.e., it is not a specially protected species in European Union). So, yes, my research of this species is just following birder's heart rather than conservationist's mind. This is also the reason why I dedicate my spare time rather than working hours to this activity.

Hoopoe is a nasty bird. Its habit of killing and eating other small animals (mainly insects but also frogs, lizards etc.) alone might make it 'bad' for some people (though probably not gardeners who might value Hoopoe's taste for mole crickets). Hoopoes, unlike many other animals, also tend to fight savagely amongst themselves. This year, when I was catching Hoopoes using a polystyrene decoy (to equip the birds with geolocators), my decoy bird was mutilated and raped by the Hoopoes I was trying to attract. Family planning is also not the nicest feature of this bird: Hoopoes lay a lot of eggs, but as the young hatch asynchronously, if the season is bad, the younger nestlings die. For some reason Latvians have also called Hoopoe 'Hunger Cuckoo' and regarded the bird a bad omen.

But the beauty of the bird makes up for it all. With its striking black-white-and-buff plumage, long beak and erectable crest Hoopoe stands out in the northern community of 'small grey birds'. In Latvia the fact that the species is rather rare also helps it ensure people's affections. No wonder I have never had a problem of finding someone to help me ring Hoopoe nestlings and my inbox is full of messages from people overjoyed to have seen Hoopoe.

I first met Hoopoe when I was a child and saw the bird several times in the vicinity of my home on the outskirts of Riga, but the relationship grew serious during my final years in school when, while doing my research for school (back then students had an option to do it, now they have to), I learned that the vicinity of Balozi, a small town just next to Riga, is one of the best breeding areas for Hoopoe in Latvia. The small gardens established on abandoned peat extraction sites offer Hoopoe excellent opportunities for foraging and breeding (the gardens are full of nestboxes for Starlings).

Hoopoes don't like company and I must admit I don't enjoy it too much either, that is one of the reasons why since 2006 my main study area is a 'quieter' place: military training area Adazi. The place is quieter in the sense that there are less people there, but, as it is still an active military area there is, of course, much noise. However, it doesn't seem to bother birds very much. The original cover of pine forests is stripped to bare sand but what might seem as a devastation has in the long (more than 80) years of military activity become a special place of nature (the military area is also Natura 2000 site), and also Hoopoe. The sandy plains are suitable foraging grounds but the concrete buildings and ruins scattered in the area are excellent nest sites.

Since 2006 thanks to the idea and work of the late Arnis Berzins additional nest sites - nestboxes - have been supplied for Hoopoes breeding in Adazi. Now when the original nest sites (buildings and ruins) are planned for removal, providing Hoopoes with nestboxes has proven to be a good idea. The nestboxes have also been a good way of getting more insight into the little known breeding biology of the Hoopoes of Latvia. For one thing the breeding season turned out to be much longer that thought before: the first eggs can be laid in the end of April but the last nestlings fledge in the beginning of August. This year my colleague Ieva Mardega, analysing the records of ringed Hoopoes in the nestboxes for European Rollers, confirmed what I had long suspected: Hoopoes can have two broods per season also as far north as Latvia.

This year my little pet project gained some international importance thanks to Rien van Wijk, a Dutch colleague working on Hoopoes in Switzerland. He contacted me asking if I would be willing to cooperate to study migration patterns of Hoopoes by equipping the birds with geolocators. A geolocator is not a transmitter. It is a small device recording the time of day and the intensity of light, and using these data an approximate location of the bird can be calculated. However, to get the data the bird has to be caught again and the geolocator has to be taken off. So this year we catch the birds the first time and hope for luck next year. Then we will find if the Hoopoes from Latvia use the same migration routes and wintering areas as the birds from Switzerland.

Hoopoes will still be in Latvia for a couple of months (and I still have some birds to catch to get to 25 as I have promised Rien), but I guess winter is the time when I really feel that Hoopoe is more than just a study object for me. Every winter for several years now there comes a moment when I realize that I really miss these nasty but lovable birds.

The spring of 250000 deaths

The long awaited spring has come. Migratory birds rush to their breeding grounds: the best territories have to be occupied, nests have to be built and eggs have to be laid. In only a couple of months the most important task in a bird's life has to be carried out: reproduction. By autumn the young birds have to fledge and be ready for their first migration. Therefore the rush.

Latvia is a land of forests: about half of the territory of the country is covered in them. Not surprisingly forests are the most important habitat for the birds breeding in Latvia. Globally important populations of Lesser Spotted Eagle and Black Stork breed here and altogether about half of the bird species breeding in Latvia are at least partially dependent on forests.

In spring the forests are full of birds' songs. Great Tits start singing already in sunny winter days, but with spring setting in they are joined by more and more species: Treecreeper, Nuthatch, Blackbird, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, Wood Pigeon, Song Thrush, Tree Pipit, Pied Flycatcher, Wood Warbler, Cuckoo...

But birds' songs are not the only sounds in the spring forest. "Husqvarna singing," my colleague Maris Strazds once said. Today it’s more often John Deere that is singing: harvesters have replaced men with chainsaws. But to be profitable logging with the forestry machinery has to be carried out all year round almost 24 hours a day. Only during the wettest times and in the wettest places it not possible but technologies to deal with this problem are being developed.

So the birds that have arrived and started looking for mates or even started laying their eggs or raising their young may have to face a scene pretty close to what Herbert George Wells described in his "The War of the Worlds": their world destroyed by alien machines, not only their houses and their young - everything. The sight of a clearcut hurts people, who know that it will take at least a generation for the forest to grow back to how it used to be. But for birds it is tens of generations, which means for them it is almost irreversible.

Very cautious estimates show that in state forests only (almost half of the total area of forests in Latvia) at least 50.6 thousand nests are destroyed by logging during April-June. Assuming there are five eggs in each nest, this means approximately 250,000 eggs or nestlings destroyed every spring. Emotions aside, this is an obvious breach of Birds Directive as well as the national law of Latvia. So what? Nothing. Discussions between LOB and the forestry sector about this issue have been dragging on for at least five years. Meanwhile forests are logged in spring and birds' nests are destroyed. Just a few weeks ago there was another fresh clearcut in state forest in a Natura 2000 site. Spring is here.