In May, the Hellenic Ornithological Society / BirdLife Greece team completed a successful tagging mission in the Aegean Sea, during which a total of six adult Audouin’s Gulls were tagged with satellite transmitters in the framework of the LIFE MareNatura project.
The marine field team of HOS managed to catch and tag gulls from three of the species’ colonies in the Aegean that will allow us not only to collect data from different breeding areas but also to compare information in order to better understand the behavior of Greece’s most threatened seabird.
Telemetry data by Tsilaros and Amersa from Skyros, Amvlemonas and Skandia from Kythera as well as by Thymainaki and Ikariotissa from the island of Fourni near Ikaria, will provide us valuable information on their movements during the breeding period and hopefully, after the birds depart, we will follow them to their -still unknown- wintering grounds.
Contrary to pelagic seabirds, Audouin’s Gulls are coastal fishers. Preliminary results show these birds tend to repeatedly visit the same foraging sites, although occasionally they will cover long distances in search of better fishing grounds.
The action will be implemented again next year. Until then, we cannot wait to find out more about the bird-symbol of the Aegean nature, as new technology allow us to “fly” along with Audouin’s Gulls while discovering the wealth of the Greek seas.
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