Territorial clash

Today I was lucky to see a serious territorial clash between Red Kite males. You can often recognize the subordinate male by the damages in its plumage. Certain territorial challenges can carry on for hours, maybe even days.


Broken feathers, probably typical in young adult males that try to settle a territory at this time of the year


























Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The recovery of a dead bird

Image
One of the most important parts of this study is the end of the life of a kite. Survival and causes of mortality are some of the main focuses.  To find out if one of our tagged birds died, every third day we check all the loggers that we have flying around. The GPS positions send by SMS tell us if a bird is still moving or not. Additional information on temperature and activity make it a bit easier to assess if a bird is still alive.  On the 8th of January it was my turn to 'check the birds'. A very interesting thing to do because you really get an insight in the movement patterns of the kites, who's migrating and in which direction? Who’s all day long in its territory and who goes to a communal roost? and of course; are there any birds that died? Which was the case this time, an adult female with transmitter SWIK40. On the 4th of January it woke up at a communal roost, 9,5 km from it's territory where it usually spend the days. At 6 o-clock the transmitters tempera...
Read more

Spring is coming, adult birds are almost all back!

Image
Of 44 tagged adults with well working transmitters, 41 are in (back) in Switzerland. The other three are actively migrating towards the North-East in France. Of the 2015, 16 and 17 young-adults, immatures and juveniles only single birds are on the move, most of them doesn't seem to be in any hurry or urge to move northwards. Some movements of February 2018, red are adult birds, yellow 2017 juveniles and green 2016 immatures. A closer view on the last part of the migration before coming back into the breeding/natal area. I assume that the adults that migrated this month, are younger individuals eversince they are the last ones to come back into their territories. Some birds miss the right exit. Almost all birds travel north of the lake of Geneva, heading already North-East since France/Spain. Some seems to miss the exit towards the study area where they are once tagged. The two birds that flew in the direction of Basel before going back Nor...
Read more