New observation of a Saker falcon by the Green Balkans project team

The field monitoring of the Green Balkans project team brought back new results! Last week, during the regular monitoring, the team found out 2 years old female bird, which was actively feeding in one of the well-known souslik colonies.

On closer inspection we found that the bird is not tagged with a ring. Given its behavior and the time of the year of the observation, it couldn’t be ruled out that this is a falcon, hatched last year in the area which has stayed and continued to feed there.

This is presumptive evidence for the existence of a third nesting area of the species in Bulgaria. There is still much to be done by our team in order to prove or refute this hypothesis.

Saker falcons are hard to monitor birds. They are fast and covert and disappear from the sight in a second. Patience and persistence are necessary to find a pair of this species.

The pairs in the two known to the team nesting areas in Bulgaria have been set up with birds, hatched in the Wildlife Rescue Breeding Center and released in the nature within the project “Reintroduction of the Saker Falcon in Bulgaria”. It’s possible that the parents of this young bird were some of them.



We hope that we will find this soon enough if the efforts and determination of the field team will be fruitful.

Photographs: © Green Balkans