Thousands of winged warblers are screaming in the meadows of the Baltic Sea, but fewer than last year's breeding population

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Šilutės naujienos 2025-01-27 13:00:53 Comments: 0

Ventės ornitologijos stotis. Gedimino Stanišausko nuotr.

The Vente Ornithological Station bred more than 100,000 birds last year. This is slightly behind the previous year, when ornithologists counted 119,000 birds, but on a par with the average of the last decade.

And now thousands of wintering swans, as well as geese and ducks, are already calling in the meadows of the Pamari River.

Most swallows and tits

Kaunas T. Ivanauskas Museum of Zoology, which has Ventė Ornithological Station, reports that 100,582 birds and bats bred at the station during 2024. 133 species of birds and 7 species of bats were trapped. The latter, by the way, last year only 252, while the year before, in 2023, as many as 1 665 were caught, belonging to 9 species.

In 2024, the largest number of swallows that flew into ornithologists' traps was 21,258, with almost the same number of blue and great tits. 6 920 Common Larks, 4 356 Alder Warblers and 3 723 Flamingoes also bred. Other birds were fewer in number, with only 420 gulls – the fewest – caught in the nets.

Interestingly, 132 birds were ringed at 18 ringing centres in Barcelona, Brussels, Budapest, Gdansk, Helsinki, London, Paris, etc.

768 chicks that have not yet flown were also ringed in Pernai Vente, compared to only 123 the previous year.

Of the 252 bats in 2024, the largest number of bats bred in the Natuzium was 204.

In contrast, in 2023, about 119,000 birds and 1,665 bats were caught in the station's ornithologists' traps. The year before last, the steppe lynx and the alka were also ringed in Vente for the first time since the beginning of ringing in 1929.

Svencelė will not stop the birds

After seeing such a difference in numbers, internet users were quick to wonder why there was such a drop in the number of winged birds passing through Vente last year. One even quipped that the reason for the drop could be the growing Svencelė „megapolis“…

One of the reasons, according to Mr Jusis, is that no traps for starlings were built last year. But the prevailing winds have a much greater impact on bird migration. Last year, the most unfavourable east-south-easterly winds prevailed in our region, while there were very few days when the most favourable west-south-west winds blew.

Even though the second month of winter is still just ending and the calendar spring is far away, flocks of geese and ducks are already screaming in the flooded fields of the Pomeranian coast, as well as 2-3 thousand song swans that have overwintered in the meadows of Sausgalviai.