27 January 2024: Day 9, Chobe Nationwide Park, Botswana — Street Student Southern Africa Birding Safari. Click on right here to peer (normally) the place I’m as of late.
Amur falcons (Falco amurensis) breed in Siberia and northerly China and shuttle 22,000 km (13,670 mi) every fall to southern Africa. No longer best is their migration the longest of the entire raptors but if they stopover in autumn to refuel in Nagaland, India their flock can quantity part one million birds. At the moment they’re in southern Africa the place I am hoping to peer them.
Amur falcons are insectivores who, on migration, seize flying bugs to consume in mid air.
They time their migration and make a choice a path to profit from insect swarms.
- In northeastern India winged grownup termites swarm in autumn in Nagaland.
- Over the Arabian Sea dragonflies migrate within the fall from India to Africa.
- In southern Africa, December to March rains spawn swarms of termites, locusts, ants and beetles.
Amur falcons are provide from October to December close to the Nagaland village of Pangti the place they fatten up on termites sooner than proceeding their adventure. There are masses of hundreds of falcons within the air without delay.
Their abundance led to close tragedy, then again. Till the apply led to 2012, Nagaland hunters stuck tens of hundreds of falcons in keeping with day in fishing nets hung from the bushes. Every 12 months they killed 250,000 Amur falcons to promote as meat for mere pennies. They idea the falcons would by no means disappear.
The killing ended hastily when journalist Bano Haralu returned to her native land, witnessed the destruction, and were given a searching ban positioned in November 2012. Extra importantly, she and her colleagues taught the villagers, and particularly the kids, the significance of the falcons and some way ahead thru ecotourism. It used to be a shocking turnaround and a credit score to the folk of Nagaland.
In 2018 Scott Weidensaul went to Pangti to peer the birds and inform their superb tale in A Galaxy Of Falcons: Witnessing The Amur Falcon’s Large Migration Flocks. Birders flocked to the spectacle final fall.
I’m taking a look ahead to seeing Amur falcons in southern Africa.
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