For the ninth year in a row The Milvus Group has been participating in the Pannon Bioregion’s Eagle Census, organised by the Hungarian Ornithological Society. As part of the monitoring programme carried out in January, data collected from Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia were used to produce the Carpathian Basin’s joint winter “eagle map”. In total, 2,552 eagles and 320 falcons were recorded.
Across the four participating Central European countries, experts recorded 23,165 individuals (18,486 last year) from 17 raptor species in 1,064 sampling squares of 10×10 km:
- Common kestrel – 2,580 (3,090 last year)
- White-tailed eagle – 1,513 (1,788 last year)
- Eastern imperial eagle – 1,019 (899 last year)
- Golden eagle – 14 (8 last year)
- Greater spotted eagle – 6 (9 last year)
- Saker falcon – 174 (136 last year)
- Peregrine falcon – 75 (69 last year)
- Merlin – 71 (76 last year)
- Black kite – 13 (34 last year)
- Red kite – 402 (286 last year)
- Western marsh harrier – 441 (1,345 last year)
- Hen harrier – 1,196 (552 last year)
- Northern goshawk – 94 (68 last year)
- Eurasian sparrowhawk – 566 (465 last year)
- Common buzzard – 14,658 (12,333 last year)
- Rough-legged buzzard – 315 (181 last year)
- Long-legged buzzard – 28 (12 last year)
In Romania, the survey was carried out in Bihor County, in a Natura 2000 protected area. During the two survey days, observers covered 424 squares of 2×2 km and recorded among the main target species 3 White-tailed eagles and 2 Eastern imperial eagles.. In addition, other raptors were also recorded: 2 Saker falcons, 1 Peregrine falcon, 70 Common kestrels, 246 Common buzzards, 4 Rough-legged buzzards, 43 Hen harriers and 6 Eurasian sparrowhawks.
