Monitoring of the successful breeding and rearing of the offspring of the griffon vultures in Cyprus.

Extract from Wikipedia: Poison baits are still the greatest threat to residual stocks in south and south-eastern Europe. In Cyprus, for example, 80% of stocks died from pesticide poisoning, 36 of them in 1996 alone. The following year, the number of breeding pairs halved from 16 to 8 and has remained virtually unchanged since then.

In 2015, the severely decimated population of griffon vultures in Cyprus was already severely decimated when the program for the settlement of young griffon vultures imported from Crete was launched. Now, 5 years later, there are also persistent breeding successes in the brood-pairs, which have newly formed in Cyprus.

What happened? Why does the excellent Panasonic GH5 have to go and the Panasonic DC-S1 full-frame camera comes for the video area in my photo bag? Well, this has very special reasons, which has exclusively to do with my camera - field of application nature photography.

Of course, the more modern full-frame camera Panasonic DC-S1 also has technical advantages in other areas, full format, 24.2 MB sensor, V-LOG 4:2:2 10bit internal recording, lowlight range up to -6.5 aperture levels, switchable to APS-C format in the video area, autofocus with animal and eye recognition and much more.

The first young bird of the Rollers has left the brood cave at my location in the crumbling building. The second followed a day later.

Now they commute from the nearby mulberry tree and their brood cave and also make short trips around the tree. The Adult birds feed the young-birds on the tree, obviously one or more young-birds is to be supplied in the brood-cave.

The third boy of the brood-pair 1 has now, two days later, also come to the tree. Family 1 should now be complete.

It goes wildly confused at the brood-bird - main road.

In addition to the Roller, the magpies, Collared pigeons and Cyprus  Wheatear can be seen, along with large flight troops with Jackdaw, who move with their young birds from the spring through the surroundings.

There are no young blue-racks yet to be seen, the alto-birds are on the road with food every 15 minutes.

With a small rat as fodder, a blue-crack arrived today at the breeding cave.

On the weekend around 15 June I looked in Androlikou to see if there is a second nest in the Hoopoe brood cave, unfortunately without success.

For this purpose, all 5 young birds were present at the Old Walls at the stone owls and provided wonderful situations for the photographer.

I was even more surprised by the fact that on the road to the old town hall the air was full of blue-racks, which flew with food to the old, half-decayed buildings.

It is my second visit after 7 days around Ineia and Androlikou to see which of the breeding birds are still to be seen.

The Hoopoe pair brooding in the olive tree has completed the first brood, the young and alto-birds have left the brood-cave.

Of the 6 brood-caves of the Blauracken only one was occupied with young-bird, the alto-birds were also to entice this young-bird from the brood-cave.

After the lock down I walked 3 months after my last visit the Anarita Park area as far as Nata to see because it is going on in the bird world, especially with the breeding pairs.

To my surprise I have uncovered another stone owl brood-pair, so that now 3 pairs at the same time breeds and raise their boys there.

I was also able to observe several pairs of blue-racked and a lot of kestrels, in the area near Nata then also red-swallows and dohlen, all there to nest-pairs.
I was also able to take a few pictures, especially the newly found incubator of the stone owl was very ergifty.

End of March - beginning of April is the time of the arriving flycatchers, the beginning made this year the mourning catcher, then came the collared snapper and the half-ring snapper. The Grauschnäpper was the last arrival of this bird species.

In addition, the two Hoopoe couples were on the road almost daily in the garden and the surrounding area. The highlight of the Hoopoe were the feeding rituals, which were seen as part of the bridal advertisement under the olive trees in the garden.

The Hoopoe pairs have meanwhile moved to their brood-caves, the brood-business is in full swing. Unfortunately, one of the breeding pairs was then driven away by clearing work and permanent noise from last year's breeding tree.

At the beginning of April, the number of different bird species at the meeting point Feigenbaum is highest, which is a reflection of the arrived songbirds on the bird migration to the west and north.

Now the flycatchers also come to the present ground-eaters, and so at the meeting point Feigenbaum full action is called for. Also with the Wiedehopfen the calling males become more and more audible and indicate their precincts.

Here are some pictures of the bird species present.

In the last days of March, other feathered guests have arrived in our garden, many of them using the public bird bath in the garden.

I have listed some of them below.

After the government in Cyprus imposed an exit ban on us because of the coronavirus, I am glad and grateful that I can move freely in our orchard.

Apparently, this has also been talked about by migratory birds and I can't complain about the influx of feathered guests. I probably wouldn't have found more outside in the surrounding area.

The Hoopoe couple from last brood year has arrived again and with him a second couple. I'm curious to see where the settles are.

Difficult times are these with the Corona Virus for everyone, even here on the island of Cyprus, much is no longer going its usual way.

So I have also greatly reduced my trips to the various hotspots for migratory birds. Tourists and photographers as guests have no or very limited access to the island at the moment. The entire BirdLife Cyprus crew has been working with each other from home via telephone and video since 16 March.

But regardless of the limitations of the Corona virus, life in nature continues and with it the migration of migratory birds. I would like to tell you something about this.

A week ago, Raya and Howard spotted the Booted Eagles on the Akrotiri Peninsula.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to see the two smal eagles in the Akrotiri Marsh and take some pictures of the Booted Eagle.

The Booted eagles are comparable in size to the Common Buzzard, but have 6 fingers at the wing ends instead of 5.

 One Booted Eagle was seen in the bright morph and the second in the dark morph.

On Saturday 25 january I was again in the Akrotiri Marsh - Fasouri on the Akrotiri peninsula. I was completely surprised that even there, right by the sea, the grass was covered with a little rough.

There are always large groups of ducks to be seen, but only when they fly a round by the cane harriers terrified. Some dwarf divers and ducks were in the water, Fitis and cane singers fetch the insects from the reed plants.

A Bekasine put a short stop in front of me, silk heron sonands and spurkiebitze also passed again and again on the shores. A kingfisher always stayed at a distance from me in the middle of the pond.

The weather in January is very wintry, storms, thunderstorms, heavy rains, everything is there. Not exactly an invitation for migratory birds. So it is not surprising that very few reports / sightings are made.

Also with us in the garden only the sparrows are active and already on the expansion of the nests. A few finches, blood-hangings and sledge, a house red-tail, that's it. In the Anarita area, the stone owl can already be seen around the incubators and, as always, from November, the rock-stone-slingiser is native to the Plateu.

The number of flamingos in the Akrotiri Salt Lake has risen to about 12,500 birds (Colin Richardson) between the holidays. As soon as the weather plays along I will also go to the salt lake.

Panasonic will replace my Canon Equipment at the turn of the year.

Unfortunately, the first mirrorless full-frame camera from Canon EOS R has never delivered the one I had learned since it was purchased in October 2018. Neither in the severely restricted video area nor in the photo area could the EOS R provide the performance of the previously used EOS 5D Mark IV.

In the meantime, Canon has already announced a successor model for the EOS R (after 1 year) instead of upgrading the camera in terms of performance. If you don't want to miss the technical advances that other camera manufacturers have been offering for a long time, a further investment is definitely imminent.