2017.07.14.  14:01

We’ve checked 250 artificial roller nestboxes between 30^th May and 6^th June, that were installed during the project in the western part of Romania. The first control targeted two main areas where the roller density is highest, whit the aim to find out the occupation rate and the stage of breeding. 

The contents of the nest can be easily shown on a mobile phone screen with this new device (Photo: Milvus Group).

In the following days, between 7^th and 10^th June, two teams captured adult birds in order to tag them with geolocators.

In total, a number of 25 rollers were captured, and equipped with locators, marked with individual color ring combinations, as well as blood samples were taken for a malaria study.

Geolocators are small devices that are mounted on the back of the bird with a slim harness. They will serve to detect the rollers migration routes but they do not send GPS data like satellite tags. Instead they locate the birds based on the alternations of day and night, thus determining on which hemisphere and near which longitude ​​the bird is. The birds need to be re-captured the following year in order to download the data gathered by the geolocators. 

Geolocators before installation (left) and fixed on the Roller’s back (right) (Photo: Mikulaj Sándor).

Two of the 25 captured birds were ringed in Hungary, three were ringed in Serbia, and one ringed by us in the previous year.

Serbian ringed (left) and Hungarian ringed (right) rollers captured in the Romanian project area (Photo: Milvus Group).

Szilárd Daróczi J.

NIke Dunk SB MID