Welcome to the website of the Dutch Montagu's Harrier Foundation

The third season of the transmitter adventure

By now, Montagu's Harriers have brought us into many different countries. The last months were busy, successful and interesting. Trapping the birds for satellite transmitters was difficult due to the mostly bad weather conditions during the breeding season but at last, we could realize our goals.
On 15 August we finished the vole counts and this was the end of a good breeding season. People went on holiday, others continued working and in the meantime, we could enjoy watching Montagu's Harriers on the harvested fields until the end of August. Satellite data kept coming in and by now, we have some interesting news on the satellite birds. Our fieldwork was also successful because of the enthousiastic participation of two motivated students. Furthermore we have participated in a European project using wingtags and have documented that it was a good vole year in Flevoland, East Groningen and the German Rheiderland. In the end of July, grasshopper-expert Wim Mullié from Dakar visited us. We will have more results from these subjects later this autumn. First, we would like to introduce our new satellite birds from the past breeding season to you, and from now on, Amy Bergman will place a wekely update on the more than 10 tracked birds on the website.

Before we continue on Harriers we would like to draw your attention to the adventure of BirdLife Netherlands with eight Purple Herons. Martin Poot and Jan van der Winden of Bureau Waardenburg trapped these beautiful herons and on the website of BirdLife Netherlands you will find the interesting comments on the migration of these birds by Ruud van Beusekom. The Dutch Montagu's Harrier Foundation would like to congratulate the people who have realized the second satellite-tracking project in the Netherlands. The nice coincidence is that Purple Herons and Montagu's Harriers can meet each other on their African wintering grounds! The migration of the Purple Herons can be followed on the nice website of BirdLife Netherlands. www.vogelbescherming.nl/purperreiger

2007 is a special satellite season: For the first time we are able to track eastern European birds! The organisation of tagging these birds was difficult and a big challenge. That means we are very glad that four tagged Montagu's Harriers from East Poland and NW Belarus started their migration. The beautiful nature in both countries, the impressive number of farmland birds but also the nice people we worked together with make it clear that our group has moved in a new direction. It's an exciting direction with unknown horizons for future co-operations.

Dmitri Vintchevski
Dmitri Vintchevski 		Dominik Krupiñski
Dominik Krupiñski 		Hubertus Illner
Hubertus Illner

Also in the hart of the German Montagu's Harrier population (the Hellwegbörde), three Montagu's Harriers got a satellite transmitter. Special thanks to Dmitri Vintchevski (Belarus), Dominik Krupiñski (Poland) en Hubertus Illner (Germany).

Our Spanish friends have tagged only juvenile Montagu's Harriers this year and the migration of the different birds can be followed on www.seaturtle.org. We have in total 11 new transmitter birds (of which three juveniles) and we are very glad that we succeeded for the first time to trap a couple. Our dream scenario was realized, we have made new friends and are busy to start the third expedition to Niger in Africa. Because of high workload during the fieldseason (on average 6 days a week 12 hours a day), we have not been able to update our website from 15 May. Protection, research, training of students and volunteers and the many visitors to our farmland bird project needed much of our energy. We have improved the internal communication by issuing a digital newsletter (to download here) but we can reassure our regular readers that from now on, there will be wekely updates of the transmitter birds and regular updates on the general work of our foundation.

Interesting links:
Satellite birds in the Polish press: Polish report of the breedingseason 2007: