The Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve Finish Winter Bird Monitoring Season

On February 23-26 in the Prioksko-Terrasny Reserve the last winter bird monitoring finished the 31st season of works on the basis of Russian Birds Conservation Union (“Parus”).Our employees, professional ecologists and young naturalists from biological class of Moscow Darwin Museum took part in the monitoring.

Фото_хорошая погода

The upcoming spring changed the weather conditions: in the afternoon temperature was above 0 and below 0 at night. It lead to the formation of a strong frozen crust, which made it difficult to use either special skies or to go by foot. The weather was very changeable with sunny moments and snowstorms. So sometimes bird activity was very low and transportation was complicated.  Nevertheless, due to frozen paths, made earlier with snowmobiles and skies, we managed to pass to all necessary parts of the reserve and to visit all the biotopes. Monitoring groups included 2 or 3 people. In total we passed 60.1 km, 47.5 of which through mixed forest and 12.6 through pine forest. We found 22 bird species – woodpeckers (greater spotted woodpecker, white-backed woodpecker, black woodpecker and three-toed woodpecker), raven, hooded crow, jay, magpie, tits (great tit, crested tit, coal tit, willow tit, long-tailed tit, nuthatch, treecreeper, goldcrest), siskin, greenfinch, bullfinch, hazel grouse, sparrowhawk, rough-legged hawk.