Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Wintering raptors in central Italy

In December and January we perfomed road counts of wintering raptors in central-western Italy. As expected the commonest species were Common buzzards and Kestrels, however several other species were observed. The most unexpected one was the Long-legged buzzard wintering in an inland area of Latium. Taking a first look to the results, the distribution of wintering raptors seems to be really disomogeneous with very low density across most of the investigated territory and a few patches with high density of raptors and well stuctured communities. These areas are located along the coastline whit existing protected areas. Here below one wintering Common buzzard.