NBI on TV

Very recently, Northern Bald Ibis was the main character on a short documentary on Moroccan TV. It's in arabic, but if you cannot understand, images are worth to see.

Enjoy it!!

All three Syrian adults, back in Palmyra

Our colleagues in Syria just told us that all three adults, Odeinat, Salama and Zenobia, are safely back from migration on the Syrian breeding grounds today. Odeinat has been transmitting since a couple of weeks, but Salama hadn't since late last year, but this now seems to simply be tag failure rather than anything worse. 

Still no sign of the other two untagged birds that were seen on the Ethiopian wintering grounds, so where those birds go is becoming a source of speculation. 

Or perhaps they will appear at Palmyra one of these days.

From RSPB

WALDRAPPATHON

Another creative project around Northern Bald Ibis is the Waldrappathon, an artwork by Steve Walker based on ink drawings and watercolours as well as poems (haikus and sonnets).

News from the Eastern population

Wonderful news from the Eastern population. After the new activity recorded last February 8th, Odeinat started moving North. Since 16th, in few days crossed Bab el-Mandeb, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and arrived to Syria!!

No signal yet from Salama, which is worrying as other years she re-started transmitting before these dates.

EWNHS

Other good news came from Ethiopia. Our colleagues from the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society (EWNHS), our BirdLife Partner, have been checking last week the area frequented by wintering NBI. They were able to find three birds. Two of them unringed (maybe same birds as appeared unexpectedly last year by the same area, perhaps Syrian juveniles from 2007 that have yet to return to the breeding grounds) and one ringed bird, either Zenobia or Salama.

Joe Beale and NBI

This is a Joe Beale finepen drawing of a Northern Bald Ibis. He draw it for Summersdale book Was Beethoven a Birdwatcher? A Bird's eye History of the World, by David Turner, appeared in 2011.

Joe works with fineline pen and watercolour pencil in books, magazines, TV, ... His interests include mainly birds and other wildlife, but also gothic and ghostly issues, as shown by the name of his ghost blog. 

Ralph Steadman's view on NBI

Northern bald ibis is a highly iconic bird, and his image has been largely reproduced by many artists.

This impressive image is an artwork by Ralph Steadman (renowned for his political and social caricatures, cartoons and picture books) for the project Ghosts of gone birds. This is a huge creative project involving more than 120 artists to encourage preservation of bird species through raising awareness and funds for  BirdLife International's Preventing Extinctions programme.

Odeinat, transmiting again!

Odeinat, one of the two Syrian ibis which is monitored by RSPB, is equiped with a satellite tag that stopped working on November 2011. It started sending information again last February 8th, from an area North to Jijiga, in Ethiopia, a place that Odeinat has been visiting before last October. On 16th he transmitted again from a nearby site.

New breeding season approachs

NBI start to frequent the breeding areas since the beginning of February, but visits are now much more frequent and some started bringing material to the nests.

Aylal is constantly moving between a coastal area north to Agadir up to the Tamri colony and neighbour fields. 

NBI data on 2011 breeding season

En español

Breeding activity of the NBI during 2011 in the Souss-Massa-Tamri area was very good,  following on from similar results in 2010. Breeding success (1.3 fledgling/nest) was the same as during the previous year.
The survival of chicks in the Souss-Massa National Park was 82%, which is much higher than in the unprotected area of Tamri, where it's only 43%. This may be due to differences in the quality of the feeding sites and perhaps also to disturbance in Tamri, although the final ratio of fledglings/nest is similar (1.4 in SMNP; 1.2 in Tamri).

Evolution of breeding pairs numbers in Souss-Massa-Tamri area

The breeding population remains stable and no new sites have been colonised. Nevertheless, the potential for expansion is very important. 

Group of adults and youngsters, July 2011

The total number of ibis, before and after the breeding season, based on regular counts, are shown in the graph below.

Evolution of pre and postnuptial numbers

The 2011 breeding repport  shows that 110 pairs were formed from the 251 individuals counted before breeding. Taking into account the 138 fledglings, we can see that a large number of additional birds were counted after the breeding season. This suggests that there are many more birds spread throughout the region,  which is where satellite tagging can play an important role, by helping to identify previously unknown sites that could be important for the conservation of northern bald ibis .

The breeding repport is available in French.

Aylal

 

On january 21st Aylal has been seen and photographied by Michel Terrier by Tamraght, close to Agadir, with six other individuals.


On Michel's blog we can see an assorment of pictures of Aylal with the other birds, not far from their observers.

.The group was composed of five adults and two young.

All the pictures by Michel Terrier.