After 2019-2020 season, which led to 8 complete migratory tracks and data from 8 departures for the pre-nuptial migration, today we are pleased to announce that 12 individuals marked in December 2020 are currently in the middle of the journey towards the reproductive sites. Departures began on 5 March, while for one subject there was an interruption of transmissions in Liguria from 24 February and the signal started again on 23 March in Hungary. To these subjects is added another marked woodcock in December 2019 which began the migration in the first days of April, for a total of 13 individuals who wintered in Italy. The study campaign of December 2020 led to a great result with 16 marked woodcocks with GPS-GSM transmitter and a subject with ARGOS satellite transmitter marked in January.
This year the activities took place in Liguria with 7 individuals, in Molise with 2, in Sardinia with 3 subjects, in Piedmont with 2, in Sicily with 2 and in Campania with 1 woodcock for a total of 17. There have been losses, as is normal to happen, due to slaughter, predation or unknown factors; in one case the transmitter has been recovered and in another the recovery operations are in progress. These days the migrating individuals are found in various European nations, from Hungary to Slovakia, Poland, Austria, Ukraine and Russia. The research, carried out with the collaboration and scientific supervision of the University of Milan, from this year made use of a technological improvement with the use of a thermal imaging camera, which allowed a better and faster identification of the subjects present in the field, in the past identifiable only through the use of the lighthouse.
We are therefore in the second year of research carried out with the marking in December, which allows you to more consistently verify the departure date for migration, and the results are confirming what has already been achieved with the publication of 2019 in the scientific journal of zoology "Current Zoology": woodcocks begin to migrate from early March, with possible exceptions in the last days of February. These data again deny the Key concepts data in force today, which assigns the beginning of the pre-nuptial migration of the species.
The data collected through this research also allows the identification of the foreign reproductive areas of the subjects that winter in Italy and will allow us to collaborate with the institutions of those countries to preserve them over time. Telemetry once again proves to be an irreplaceable technology for understanding the biology and migratory behaviors of birds, both for applications in the management field and for general scientific knowledge.