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Honey-buzzard © Alexander Bazo, Creative Commons

Tracking the fearless Honey-buzzard to Malta

September 6, 2019
Categories
  • European Honey Buzzard
  • Malta
Tags
Malta

Despite being a protected species, the European Honey-buzzard is one of the birds that is a victim of illegal killing in Malta. Every year, our partner BirdLife Malta retrieves several Honey-buzzards with gunshot injuries. Sadly, most of them do not survive. The few that do, are released back into the wild after they are fully rehabilitated.

The European Honey-buzzard is a common migrant in Malta. Although sightings of Honey-buzzards are more common in Sept犀利士 ember and October, a smaller number also migrate through Malta in the springtime. During their migration, they are typically seen in flocks and occasionally roost in wooded areas and other undisturbed land.

In October 2016, a juvenile Honey-buzzard was found roosting in Malta for two nights,  seemingly normal behavior for these birds during their migration. However, we soon discovered that there was something extra about this seemingly ordinary affair – this young raptor had been fitted a tracking device just a few months earlier at its nest in Finland!

European Honey-buzzard ©Patrik Byholm

Thanks to this little satellite tracker placed on the bird’s back, BirdLife Malta ornithologists could learn more about the tendency for Finnish birds to fly south-southwest over the Mediterranean Sea. The tracker showed that this Honey-buzzard had carried out some of his migration at night. The Honey-buzzard, like the vast majority of raptors, migrate during the day time, because they rely on thermals to let them soar.

On its way to Malta, this young bird had left the Otranto region of the Italian peninsula on morning of the 8th of October, and crossed the Ionian sea, flying overnight to reach Malta on the 9th of October. In Malta, it stayed around the Buskett and Dingli area on the first day and roosted in Buskett on the second day until it safely left the islands and continued southward.

Thanks to Finnish academic Dr. Patrik Byholm, BirdLife Malta could trace the history and origins of this bird.

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Stichting BirdLife Europe and BirdLife International gratefully acknowledge financial support from the MAVA Foundation, the EU LIFE programme, the European Commission and Vogelbescherming Nederland (BirdLife Netherlands).
All content and opinions expressed on these pages are solely those of Stichting BirdLife Europe.
"Flight for Survival" is partially funded by the LIFE Against Bird Crime project. More information is available here.

Over 25 000 000 million birds are illegally killed around the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and the Caucasus every year. For non-rounded, mean numbers, and minimum/maximum estimates, see: Preliminary assessment of the scope and scale of illegal killing and taking of birds in the Mediterranean (Brochet et al 2016) and Illegal killing and taking of Birds in Europe outside the Mediterranean: assessing the scope and scale of a complex issue (Brochet et al., 2018)

“Flight for Survival” is a BirdLife International campaign managed by Stichting BirdLife Europe to raise awareness about the illegal killing of birds in Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, Lebanon, Bulgaria and Hungary, and their conservation activities to fight this.” The species storylines for this campaign are heavily inspired by the information available on the migration habits of the selected birds.

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