You get close on your tip-toes; you even hold your breath. You wholeheartedly hope that the Roller from the artificial hollow or the loess wall won’t hear your steps heading towards. She’s a very suspicious bird, will fly out at every little sound she considers it hostile. So approaching its nest is one of the toughest moments because you do it with a net to make sure the bird will not fly.
This episode is just an introduction to a wide series of actions as ringing, genetic sample collecting, geolocators and satellite transmitter mounting on 25 Rollers in the Western Plain, South-East parts of Romania, precisely Arad, Timiș, Bihor, Ialomița, Teleorman and Tulcea counties.
The populations of Rollers are declining considerably and already disappeared from several Western European countries as nesting species. The “Conservation of the European Roller (Coracias garrulus) in the Carpathian Basin” (LIFE13/NAT/HU/000081) aims at a wide range of conservation actions as tree planting, habitat reconstruction, insulation of the medium voltage poles, installing artificial nestboxes, raise awareness and involvement of local stakeholders but also research and monitoring actions.
To find out more about the migration routes, the wintering areas, the dangers they encounter on their migration routes three Rollers in the Western Plains and three in South-Eastern Romania were equipped with satellite transmitters.
Ornithologists, as well as those curious about the movements and migration of these birds from Europe to Africa, will be able to follow them soon on http://www.satellitetracking.eu.
Some names of these birds have special resonances. For example, Bolomey bears the name of a beautiful castle (near his breeding site) from Ialomița County, built in 1898 by Italian craftsmen, about whom you can read here: http://mjialomita.ro/sectiile-muzeului/bolomey.
Much of the birds have been named after the neighbourhood locality. Thus, Victor was baptized after the neighbouring village of his nesting area, the village of Victoria in Tulcea County.
Márton and Ágya were baptized after neighbouring villages, Sânmartin respectively Adea.
You can find out more about our work on the field, how easy or how hard it is to ring a Roller or our purposes in this video:(in Romanian)
(in Hungarian)
The consortium leader and coordinating beneficiary of the project is BirdLife Hungary in partnership with ˮMilvus Group” Bird and Nature Protection Association (Romania), Environmental Protection Agency of Satu Mare County (Romania), Bükk National Park Directorate (Hungary), Kiskunsági National Park Directorate (Hungary) and DALERD Délalföldi Forestry Close Corporation Ltd. (Hungary).
