News from the Strait of Messina

A new fieldwork season began at the Strait of Messina. After a week of observations, ca. 1500 raptors were counted, mostly Black Kites. In the picture (by Michele Cento), a flock of Black Kites roosting yesterday at sunset, very close the observation post.

Two new papers out now!

In the first one we analyze for the first time three autumn and three spring migrations of an adult European Honey Buzzard belonging to the population breeding in Central-eastern Europe tracked by satellite telemetry.

Agostini N, Prommer M, Váczi M, Panuccio M 2019. Repeated large scale loop migrations of an adult European Honey Buzzard. Avocetta 43: 13-21.

In the other one we investigate the composition and abundance of wintering raptors in Rome.

Panuccio M, Foschi F, Todini A, Baldi A, Dominicis N, De Filippis P, Casini S, De Pisa G, Palmeri A 2019. Better to stay downtown or in the countryside? Raptors wintering in urban and rural protected areas of Rome (Central Italy). Avocetta 43: 67-73.

Michele: a young short-toed eagle tagged with GPS

Some days ago, exactly 30 days after Michele's death, we tagged with a satellite transmitter this young short-toed eagle, that could only be called Michele. One of its parents is Egidio, a short-toed eagle that we have been following since its birth and that this year bred successfully for the first time. We hope that Michele will soon fly across European and African skies! We thank Ornis Italica for the collaboration.

New papers: radar software an wintering raptors

Two papers on very different arguments have been recently published: one deals with the Hypatia-trackRadar softaware calibrated and used to monitor raptor migration in the Strait of Messina, and the other one on the wintering raptors in the islands of Crete and Sicily.

Capotosti, S., Scacco, M., Nelli, L., Dell'Omo, G., Panuccio, M. 2019. Hypatia-trackRadar: A software for animal tracking using marine surveillance radars. Ecological Informatics 53: in press.




Panuccio M., Agostini N., Nelli L., Andreou G., Xirouchachis S. 2019. Factors shaping distribution and abundance of raptors wintering in two large Mediterranean islands. Community Ecology 20: 93-103.





You can download them from our page

Goodbye Michele, have a nice flight

Tuesday 18 June Michele left us after a week of suffering. The funeral ceremony took place on Thursday 20 June in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome.
 Michele - as he required - was buried in Calabria, in Gioiosa Ionica.

News from the Strait of Messina

April has been a hard month at the Strait of Messina this year with many days of bad weather and strong southern wind. But in the end in these last days there have been the first waves of migrating Honey buzzards with more than a thousand of individuals counted by both watchpoints. Let's keep the fingers crossed for the next days!

New papers out now

Two other papers by Medraptors have been published. The first one describes the moult pattern of Marsh harriers during autumn migration at the Strait of Messina and was realized by analysing tons of pictures made during autumn 2016. 

The second one was made in the field of the activity of the Natural History Museum of Crete that has been monitoring the colonies of Eleonora's falcons since a long time. We used a broad-band marine radar to detect factors influencing the flight altitude of falcons in proximity of a colony located on a small rocky islet.

• Ramirez J., Panuccio M. 2019. Flight feather moult in Western Marsh Harriers during autumn migration. Avian Research 10:7.
• Xirouchakis S.M., Panuccio M. 2019. Hunting altitude of Eleonora's falcon (Falco eleonorae) over a breeding colony. Journal of Raptor Research 53(1): 56–65.