Eco Hvar

Hvar birds, September 2024

In early September 2024 a birdwatching couple visited Hvar and we are delighted to report that their trip was reasonably fruitful!.

European Turtle Dove European Turtle Dove

Eco Hvar received this request for advice on September 2nd 2024:

"We are a birdwatching couple that will be visiting Hvar island from this Monday till Friday. Would you be able to share with us popular trails of watching birds? Specifically, also good places to watch bird migration? We are staying near Zavala on the island. Thanks in advance!"

Juvenile Red-Backed Shrike

Our reply:

"Many thanks for your inquiry. Unfortunately our resident birdwatcher Steve Jones has left Hvar due to family reasons, so it is difficult for us to recommend the best places for birdwatching. It is also true that bird numbers have declined dramatically over the past few years. This year the hot summer also seems to have taken its toll.

That said, we hope that around Zavala you will be able to enjoy some birdlife, especially if you head towards Gromin Dolac; other possible good areas are the upper track above Zavala towards Humac; the area around Soline near Vrboska; the pond in the Stari Grad Plain.

I expect you've seen the birdwatching reports on our website? Steve made an interesting report in the spring this year. If you look back over his reports from September / October from past years, you should get some idea of what to expect in the area between Stari Grad / Dol and Jelsa / Vrboska. For instance from October 2018.

It seems the bee-eaters have already left, also the swallows. The Scops owl has not been in evidence round my way in the last few days, whereas the eagle owl has been calling, which I always take as a sign of changing seasons. Your visit may be too early to see the cranes migrating, but you may well see others gathering and making their way our...

I'm sorry not to be able to help more, as we don't have 'trails' for birdwatchers. But you may find local people in Zavala who are interested and can give you some better guidance."

Female Blackcap hovering

The birdwatchers' report:

"Thanks a lot for your extensive reply. We ended up visiting the Stari Grad pond (which due to the weather was more a puddle) and the airport field, the area near Soline and we paid attention to birds near our stay in Gromin Dolac.

Short-toed Snake Eagle

We managed to (primarily) hear and see multiple bee-eaters during our stay (probably migratory birds), saw a Short-toed Snake eagle near the airport field, as well as Eurasian Sparrowhawk,

Eurasian Sparrowhawk

We also saw Tawny Pipit, Barn Swallows and Northern Wheatear, besides Red-Backed Shrike and Blackcap .

Tawny Pipit at the airfield

Near the Soline beach, we saw six (!) European Turtle Doves, but nothing else worth mentioning.

European Turtle Dove

Most exciting was probably overhearing multiple Black-Crowned Night herons in Gromin Dolac at night (still needs to be confirmed, but we have high hopes!). We also overheard Scops owl, but only once. 

Thanks again for providing us with the information, we really appreciate it!"

We in turn are extremely grateful to these keen birdwatchers for sharing their experiences on Hvar with us, we hope they will come again for a longer stay.

na vrh članka
Nalazite se ovdje: Home Novosti iz prirode Hvar birds, September 2024

Eco Environment News feeds

  • Developers encroach on 2,000-year-old Devon wetland citing ‘blockages’ to Labour’s housing plans

    According to planning conditions, Wolborough Fen in Newton Abbot must be protected as groundworks are prepared for 1,200 homes

    A 2,000-year-old wetland which is one of England’s most protected habitats has “bulldozers at its gates” after developers said conditions to protect it were blocking the growth the government is demanding.

    Wolborough Fen in Newton Abbot, Devon, a site of special scientific interest (SSSI), must be protected from any damage by developers Vistry Group as they flatten hills and prepare the groundworks for 1,200 houses, according to planning conditions.

    Continue reading...

  • Regulators overlooking toxic Pfas found around Lancashire chemicals plant

    Exclusive: Environment Agency not testing for ‘forever chemical’ made by factory despite evidence of emissions

    Regulators measuring “forever chemicals” near a Lancashire chemicals plant are not testing for a substance made by the company itself, despite evidence it could be reprotoxic and is being emitted in large volumes.

    Reprotoxic means a substance can be damaging to a person’s sexual function, fertility, or their child’s development and, now,

    Continue reading...

  • Should we treat environmental crime more like murder?

    Serial killers and violent criminals dominate the headlines. What if we covered ecocide and pollution in the same way?

    Whenever you read, watch, or listen to the news, you’re likely to be exposed to stories of violence and murder. As a criminal psychologist, I’m often asked to comment on these cases to pick apart the motives of the perpetrators. People want these kinds of insights because murders feel frightening and horrifying, but also oddly compelling. There’s a level of focus and fascination, and the way these crimes are covered profoundly influences our perception of what the most urgent problems facing society are.

    One day it struck me that the world would be a very different place if environmental crimes were treated in the same way as murders. So, why aren’t they? And should they be?

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: Racing peregrines among the rusting mills | Richard Smyth

    Manningham, Bradford: Twenty-six years after this great industrial hub closed down, it still has resonances with the community via its thrilling wildlife

    A peregrine comes bombing down from the ornamented parapet of the 76-metre mill chimney Lister’s Pride, and a hundred pigeons scatter. I’m on Patent Street, Bradford, by the west wall of what was once the biggest silk mill in Europe, called Lister’s Mill, or sometimes Manningham Mills. It was thrown up in the 1870s by Samuel Cunliffe Lister, and for more than a century was one of the great industrial palaces of the north. Since shutting in 1999, about half has been restored as offices and high-end flats; the other half is derelict. Forests of buddleia cover the concrete floors, and fox trails wind through the weeds.

    Peer through steel grilles into the basements, and see hart’s-tongue ferns as thick and green as cabbages in a vegetable patch. Rust is everywhere (what John Ruskin called “living” iron: “It is not a fault in the iron, but a virtue, to be so fond of getting rusted”). On the stretch of grass across the street, gulls gather in great numbers. Today they’re mostly black-headed, with one hulking lesser black-back comically conspicuous in the middle of the throng. At the back I spot two first-year common gulls, paddling their feet in a hopeful worm dance.

    Continue reading...

  • Bonobos transformed how we think about animal societies. Can we save the last of the ‘hippy apes’?

    They are peaceful, female-led and use sex in everyday interactions. Now a new conservation scheme could offer a lifeline to our critically endangered close relatives living on the Congo river

    A few dozen large nests appear in the mist of equatorial dawn, half-hidden behind a tangle of vines and leaves. That is where the bonobos sleep, 12 metres above the ground. But it has rained all night, and the primates are in no hurry to get up. It is 6.30am when the first head emerges. It gives a cry, a sharp bark, and another silhouette unfolds from its cocoon of branches. And then another. Within five minutes, the whole group is awake – yawning, stretching, straightening. Their features are fine, their limbs long and delicate, their build less stocky than that of chimpanzees, their closest cousins.

    Bonobos live on the left bank of the Congo River

    Continue reading...

  • Government aims to create 400,000 jobs through UK national green energy plan

    Scheme will offer training for plumbers, welders and carpenters as well as promoting trade union recognition

    Plumbers, electricians and welders will be in huge demand as part of a national plan to train people for an extra 400,000 green jobs in the next five years, Ed Miliband has said.

    The energy secretary unveiled a scheme to double the number of people working in green industries by 2030, with a particular focus on training those coming from fossil fuel jobs, school leavers, the unemployed, veterans and ex-offenders.

    Continue reading...

  • World’s landscapes may soon be ‘devoid of wild animals’, says nature photographer

    Margot Raggett, whose latest compilation shows animals scrubbed from natural habitats, calls for rethink on UK accelerated housebuilding

    Margot Raggett has spent the past decade raising money for conservation efforts around the world but now she feels nervous about the future. “It does feel like we’ve taken a backward step,” she said.

    The wildlife photographer has raised £1.2m for the cause in the past 10 years through her Remembering Wildlife series, an annual, not-for-profit picture book featuring images of animals from the world’s top nature photographers. The first edition was published in 2015, when the Paris climate agreement was being drafted but, in the years since, efforts to tackle the climate crisis have been rolled back.

    Continue reading...

  • Deep in the reeds: Australian scientists put dollar figure on floating wetlands’ global water quality savings

    ‘We’ve worked out that no matter how hard you engineer something, nature filters everything much better than anything else’, says academic

    As the plants are pulled out of one of the cells of their floating pod, the long and thin roots are covered with slime.

    “This is what you want,” says Chris Walker, an environmental engineer who is struggling to keep hold of the weight of the clump of reeds.

    Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter

    Continue reading...

  • Techno-capitalists think innovation can save the planet. But that same thinking is what got us here

    An upside-down mindset is emerging around the world. We have to rethink our relationship with the environment and the technology that has caused it harm

    Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World describes a society inthrall to the values of science and technology. It is set in the futuristic World State, whose citizens are scientifically engineered to fit into a hierarchy. Eugenics, psychotropic pharmaceuticals and classical conditioning are employed to maximise stability and happiness. Huxley’s novel does not describe a conventionally authoritarian system, but one in which the desire for freedom and dignity has simply been eliminated. The World State is a radical technocracy.

    It’s a satire on the consequences of importing scientific thinking into the realm of social policy. The Controllers of the World State preside over a society that has rationality and efficiency as its guiding principles, and when those principles conflict with human nature, it is human nature that is required to give way. Rather than building a society that engenders happy human beings, the Controllers seek to design human beings that can function in the society into which they are “hatched”.

    The idea that we would invert our relationship with the world in this way strikes us as sinister, as antithetical to what it means to be human.

    And yet something resembling this upside-down mindset is now emerging across the globe, particularly in the debate around climate change.

    Having built a system that is destructive of the environment that surrounds and sustains us, we are now proposing to change … the environment! In his dystopia Huxley imagined a society that only worked when the humans within it were made into something not quite human. Today, many scientists and engineers imagine a planet that has been similarly transformed: nature itself must yield to the system. We need a technological fix.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘There were stoats in kitchen cupboards’: AI deployed to help save Orkney’s birds

    Stoats have been an existential threat to Orkney’s rare birds but technology is helping to eradicate them

    At first, the stoat looks like a faint smudge in the distance. But, as it jumps closer, its sleek body is identified by a heat-detecting camera and, with it, an alert goes out to Orkney’s stoat hunters.

    Aided by an artificial intelligence programme trained to detect a stoat’s sinuous shape and movement, trapping teams are dispatched with the explicit aim of finding and killing it. It is the most sophisticated technology deployed in one of the world’s largest mammal eradication projects, which has the aim of detecting the few stoats left on Orkney.

    Continue reading...

Novosti: Cybermed.hr

Novosti: Biologija.com

Izvor nije pronađen
Copyright © 2025 Eco Hvar. Sva prava zadržana. Developed by Orion Informatika.