Get to know the birds, click on names,
and you will be directed to their own homepages!
There you will also find more detailed maps.
1. Raushan
August 24th
moved 450 km NW
August
29th moved another 150km SE
September
4th, even more East
September
14th now moved 600 km W
September
22nd, moved far south -
Now in Pakistan!
|
2. Erzhan
August 19th,
moved 400km SW
August 27th
moved 260 km NW
September
5th moved 500 km W
October 4th, moved to Eastern Turkey
Januray 27th,
moved to SUDAN!
|
3.
Alia
August
26th
still not embarked
August
29th moved 350 km NW
September 4th moved 200 km W |
4.
Abaj.
August 27th still not embarked.
August 28th moved NW about 100km
August 31st, another 60km NW
September 14th, now moving W
January 4th, now in Saudi Arabia |
5. Dinara
September
1st still not embarked
October 4th, moved to Uzbekistan
November
13th, moved to Pakistan
*)
January
4th, now in India
|
6 Tatyana
August 22nd
moved 200 km W
September 5th moved 600 km W
November 20th, Probably in Bahrain |
7. Svetlana
August 6th
still not embarked
nothing
more heard so far
|
8. Lena
August 6th,
still not embarked
nothing more heard so far
|
9. Jibek
August
27th still not embarked
September
4th, moved 300 km W |
*) Note for Dinara: The route this bird has taken confirms a possible
route suggested by us for a couple of years,
based on historic records. Birds from Kazakhstan depart via Uzbekistan
and western Tajikistan, avoiding the high
mountains of Tien Shan, Pamir and Hindukush and flying a rather long
detour.
They would probably stopover somewhere in the lowlands and then rush
though
the hostile highland deserts of Afghanistan, stopping over again in
the Indus valley in Pakistan.
The Amazing Journey
The Sociable Lapwing Project has been
running since 2004, the year the Sociable
Lapwing was uplisted to the category
“Critically Endangered” on the basis of severe population
declines. Each year since then, researchers have collected
data on numbers, habitat use, distribution and nesting success on
the breeding grounds in Kazakhstan.
This year, a new project has began: The Amazing Journey,
where several organizations have joined in a programme
where they have tagged 9 birds with transmitters, enabling them
to follow the birds all the way from their summer-habitat in
Northern Kazakhstan, all the way down to their wintering sites as
far down as Sudan in Africa and other southern countries.
Read ore about the
Project History here
(http://www.birdlife.org/sociable-lapwing/2010/07/project-history/
)
The birds they tag are typically incubating adults that are caught
on the nest. Soon after tagging and release they go back to
their nests, to resume incubation. Their studies over several years
now show that fitting the tags actually disturbs the birds very
little and they soon go about their normal lives, successfully rearing
chicks and resuming their normal behavioral patterns as before.
The PTTs they are now using, and have fitted to eight birds in
May 2010, are the very latest technology available and quite
literally state-of-the-art. These new tags are only half the size
of the originals, weighing just 5g and also transmit more frequently
than the earlier device. The new tags are now so small and light
they can be fitted to even the smallest Sociable Lapwings
(generally the females) with no adverse side effects.
Every three days or so, the PTT starts to transmit a signal for a
period of around 10 hours. Thousands of metres above,
a fleet of satellites circle the Earth in polar orbit, meaning that
as the Earth spins below them, they gradually pass over all
points on the planet’s surface. If one of these satellites is
passing over the tag while it is transmitting, it records the frequency
and wavelength of the transmission, and uses the Doppler effect to
estimate the position of the tag, often to within just
a few kilometres.
See more about this here:
Satellite
Tracking Explained
(http://www.birdlife.org/sociable-lapwing/2010/07/the-trackers/
)
All
about The Amazing Journey - click here
