From Georgia to Tanzania: the secret ways of the Levant Sparrowhawk
by Dries Engelen & Triin Kaasiku
Levant Sparrowhawk ‘Dudu’ shortly after being released with a GPS/GSM transmitter. Photo by Pelle Mellov.
Young falconers ringing Eurasian Sparrowhawks. Photo by Gizo Seskuria.
After 3 months of flying from woodland to woodland, often following river valleys and making longer stops on the way, ‘our’ Levant Sparrowhawk ‘Dudu’ is now sending data from the savannahs of Tanzania! This is the second time a Levant Sparrowhawk’s migration has been followed to Tanzania, a previously unknown wintering site for the species. All in all, a fantastic result for the work that BRC has carried out with the young falconers and Fauna & Flora International over the last 5 years.
After introducing the young falconers to raptor ringing in 2021, we were thrilled to successfully apply for the William A. Burnham Memorial Fund of the Peregrine Fund at the beginning of this year which allowed us to get some tags and take things to the next level. Our search for lightweight GPS/GSM transmitters brought us to Hunan Global Messenger Ltd, who were excited about our project and decided to sponsor us with some extra tags still! After all these years of talking about it, and laying out the ground work with the help of the WWF INNO-fonds, we were finally going to Georgia to bring together traditional falconry practises with modern tracking technology to further study the migration of the Levant Sparrowhawk. With experienced tagger Pelle Mellov joining the BRC and FFI field team nothing could go wrong anymore, right!? Well…
Upon arriving by the end of August, count coordinators told us that most raptor species seemed to be delayed this year. Even after 14 years of counting, we learned that migration timings are not as fixed as we have believed them to be. On top of being late, weather conditions were such that birds migrated high through the blue skies, far out of reach for our young falconers to lure them down into their nets. We tried everything, while moving between our host families in Poti and Sakhalvasho, to try and find the best trapping locations in these sub-optimal conditions. We even set up a few mist nets in parallel to the trapping efforts of the young falconers, all of it to increase the chances of catching a Levant.
Young falconer waiting for Levant Sparrowhawks to arrive. Photo by Dries Engelen.
Deploying the tag on Levant Sparrowhawk ‘Dudu’. Photo by Gizo Seskuria.
Then finally, in the afternoon of the 1st of September our waiting paid off! We deployed our first tag (4.5 g) on a juvenile bird, and nicknamed it ‘Gizo’. The excitement gave the entire team a boost, providing all of us with energy needed to spend another two weeks hoping for trapping conditions to improve… Another 10 days passed before we finally caught a second bird, on September 11th. Again a juvenile, this time nicknamed ‘Dudu’, after one of our team members who ended up fighting (and overcoming) a sudden serious illness. We kept on trying for some more, but unfortunately the weather was just not on our side this year, and as the days passed, so did the Levants… high up in the skies, or further east over the mountains… until eventually Levant Sparrowhawks got replaced by Eurasian Sparrowhawks and our chances of trapping more individuals were over…
We returned home with mixed feelings, still having 6 tags left, and not getting regular updates from Gizo anymore either. Thankfully Dudu was still sending us data, allowing us to track its journey into Africa, until by mid-October Dudu too, stopped communicating. Two months passed, and we had pretty much lost hope, until suddenly, out of the blue, Dudu sent its greetings from Tanzania! Apparently, it spent a month in South Sudan, out of reach of GSM coverage, after which it continued south passing Lake Victoria and arriving to the plains of Tanzania. The tag is still in great condition and Dudu is communicating with us again on daily basis.
This was such a rewarding result that any doubts we had about continuing this work next year, were instantly replaced with enthusiasm and motivation to return to Georgia once more and deploy the six remaining tags, nicely coinciding with the 15th birthday of BRC.