Kelaynack flies south

(from BirdLife Community)

Following a successful breeding season for the semi-wild Northern Bald Ibis population at Birecik, Turkey, six of the birds were released as part of trial re-introductions work in late July. A dedicated team first caught up all the birds for the annual ringing/check of the birds at the Birecik ‘Kelaynak’ breeding station run by the Turkish Ministry of Nature Protection and National Parks, and six were selected for release in the hope that they would survive and migrate. Three were fitted with satellite transmitters, and to reduce the chance of persecution, their bright rings were replaced with much less conspicuous ones. Four of the birds were 2013 juveniles, and in addition, two one-year old birds were also released.

For the first two weeks, the birds remained very close to the breeding station, feeding at a number of local sites in the area, as well as taking supplementary food provided. This week, however, excitement mounts as five of the birds have departed south, and the intriguing news is that they have stopped off very close to Palmyra in Syria, where the remaining wild population there has this year sadly declined to just one individual.

Whether the birds will stay in the area or continue their ‘migration’ further south, we will find out from the satellite signals. The work was recommended as a priority at last year’s inaugural meeting of the AEWA International Working Group for Northern Bald Ibis, held at Jazan in Saudi Arabia and by the International Advisory Group for Northern Bald Ibis. Several partners are involved in the work in addition to the Turkish Ministry, with satellite tags provided by Doğa Derneği (BirdLife in Turkey), with Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) support.

This news is brought to you by the BirdLife Preventing Extinctions Programme

History of a confusion (and 4)

Read part 3

Rediscovery

Frierich Wilhelm Hemprich met Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in Berlin and they became friends. Both were students under Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein who  proposed them as naturalists for an expedition to Egypt in 1820. They travelled along the Nile, Palestine, Lebanon, Sinai, the Red Sea and Eritrea, gathering tens of thousands of specimens. In Massawa, Eritrea, in 1825, while organising their travel to the Highlands of Abyssinia, Hemprich died of fever and was buried on the island of Toalul.

Among the thousands of species collected they shot two birds of an unknown species that they called Ibis comatus ("hairy ibis"). In memory of his dead friend, Ehrenberg decided to change the name into Ibis hemprichi in 1832. He published the results of their expedition on the Symbolae physicae where he shared the authorship with Hemprich.Nevertheless, the description was unvalid, nomem nudus. Eduard Rüppell, who has also participated in an expedition in the same area during the same period published the species as Ibis comatus, Ehrenberg.
More or less at the same time,  Johann Georg Wagler in1832 described Geronticus calvus from South Africa, but nobody realished that both species were related. It was in 1849 that Ibis comatus entered into that genus, becoming Geronticus comatus, but the authorship was attributed to Rüppell. By this time, Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach published, in 1847, Die vollständigste Naturgeschichte der Sumpfvögel and  created a new genus for the species, calling it Comatibis comata. 

North Africa

In 1874 J.H. Gurney published Rambles of a naturalist in Egypt & other countries where he talks about the evidence that Geronticus comatus once existed in Egypt but that now "retired further south".

Between 1839 and 1842 Alphose Guichenot participated in an expedition whose results were published in 1850 in the  Exploration Scientifique de l'Algerie: pendant les annees 1840, 1841, 1842. Gichenot main speciality was fish and reptiles, but a great ornithologist also participated in the trip, François Levaillant. The name given to this bird was Ibis calvus.

Engravure by Clerge after a drawing by Levaillant from Exploration Scientifique de l'Algérie: pendant les années 1840, 1841, 1842 by A. Guichenot (1850)

Leonard Howard Lloyd Irby includes in his Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar (1895) a reference to Ibis comatus on Tangier and Mogador, in Morocco.

Bireçick

The first record for science on a big Northern Bald Ibis colony in Bireçik, besides the Euphrates in Turkey was C.G. Danford who published a second report on his trip to Turkey in 1880: A further contribution to the ornithology of Asia Minor. 
Other travellers had recorded this before outside the scientific journals. This was the case of Josef Cernik, engineer who stayed at Birecik in 1873. Before that, in 1839, William Francis Ainsworth recorded the ibis from Bireçik and also from Yaylak, 70 km above Bireçik in the Euphrates valley. The colony counted thousands of birds during 19th century until, at least, the 1930s. In 1954, Cafer Turkmen took the first pictures of kelaynak at Bireçik.

Rothschild et al. 1897

Henry Eeles Dresser published his History of the Birds of Europe between 1871-1881 He describes Ibis comata, Redcheeked ibis, from Turkey and North Africa, but don’t even mention it from Europe. He quotes Tristam who saw the bird in Laghouat, Algeria. 

Somebody had to realise that the abundant material comming from Turkey and North Africa corresponded to the same species that was widely described for Europe. It was Lionel Walter Rothschild, Ernst Hartert and Otto Kleinschmidt who first published the evidence, as we already mentioned, based on a specimen from Bireçik and the illustrations by Albin and others. 

Syria: no success for the breeding pair this year

By Chris Bowden

We have heard from the team that the breeding pair has failed to fledge any chicks this year. This is obviously a serious blow. In addition, the captive pair in Syria has also been unsuccessful, but did get rather closer to breeding than last year. We will give further details as they emerge, and will update the progress/movements of the male, Odeinat - apparently the only bird with an operational tag at the moment.

One piece of more positive news is that the semi-wild Birecik population in Turkey had a far better breeding season than usual with around 38 juveniles fledging.

Syria, no success for the breeding pair this year

We have heard from the team that the only breeding pair in Syria has failed to fledge any chicks this year. This is obviously a serious blow. In addition, the captive pair in Syria has also been unsuccessful, but did get rather closer to breeding than last year. We will give further details as they emerge, and will update the progress/movements of the male, Odeinat - apparently the only bird with an operational tag at the moment.

One piece of more positive news is that the semi-wild Bireçik population in Turkey had a far better breeding season than usual with around 38 juveniles fledging. 

(from http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/tracking/northernbaldibis/)

Turkish birds donated to Syria colony

In late 2009 the IAGNBI members celebrate a meeting in Palmyra, Syria, in order to explain the activities and results for every population of NBI and also to go forward in the conservation of the species.

One very special result of this meeting was the announcement of the initiative of transfering two ibis from the Bireçik colony to join the Syrian group.

Amina (female) and Ishtar (male) were 2010 youngsters from Bireçik, Turkey which were released in Syria after a brief settling period. This is the first time such a release had been tried and they successfully migrated to Southern Saudi Arabia guided by Salama and accompaigned by Ameer.

Ameer hatched in the wild in 2010 in Syria and is the offspring of Odeinat and untagged Zenobia - who sadly died after being found in a very weak condition two weeks after leaving Syria in southern Saudi Arabia.

After the hardest part of the migration flying through Arabian desert, the three young birds stopped transmitting and it appears they didn't survive. Anyway, the result of this experience was extremely positive because it was the first time to prove that young birds could migrate with a stranger to the South and opens a new area of conservation biology on NBI.