Alpine Bird Research

ALL THE ALPINE CHOUGH COLOURS Alpine Chough young individuals show a blackish beak tip... ...and blackish legs while adults have black beak internal part but... ...they have no black tip on the beak that is completely yellow and... ...their legs are orange

Here we are in Cervinia! Fig. 1. Mount Cervino seen from Cervinia Fig. 2. One of the working skilifts  Fig. 3. Cervinia seen from a bar located in the upper part of the town In the last few days my colleague and I went to the study area in Cervinia (Fig. 1, Fig. 2 and Fig. 3) and our puropose was catching Alpine Choughs, of course. We found them on rooftops and flying over the town, looking for food in the streets where some tourists were present and ready to ski even though the snow cover was very thin. We counted at least 150 individuals that constantly moved from one side of Cervinia to the other, and back. For this reason it was difficult to decide where to place the traps but we opted for putting them in a small field that we found among houses and hotels: it was covered with a little snow but still grass and some shrubs were visible. As soon as we reached the field, a huge flock came flying over us, then it landed on the field and on rooftops of nearby bu

Dondena area in Mont Avic Natural Park  And we are back to the mountains! My colleague and I had a two days fieldwork in Mont Avic Natural Park: our goal was to find a suitable site for placing traps and to give it a try in catching some Apine Choughs. Since it had snowed we knew that they were frequenting lower altitudes and therefore we thought to place both mistnets and clapnets around 1600 masl; unfortunately snow melting had left lots of grasslands patches free from snow and therefore we found the choughs around 2000 masl, foraging on grasslands and shrubs (especially on Juniper). We used the first day trying to understand how to be successfull with the captures and making some attempts with the clapnets but even if they foraged in the area where our traps were present, they seemed not to be attracted by the baits (raisin, bread and apple like always).  So the first day ended  without captures and samples, but with frozen feet.  On the second day we placed our f

During the summer we managed in collecting a good amount of data concerning grasshopper abundance distribution and Alpine Chough occurrence. Unfortunately catching them was the most difficult part🐤: for this reason we decided to make a greater effort trying to capture some individuals during the ongoing autumn and next winter. As usual, the aim is to ring them and to obtain faeces and feathers for the analysis,  but since one of the study's objectives is to know the population movements, we would like to involve tourists adding a citizen science part to the project: therefore we ask (to everyone going for a walk in Mont Avic or Cervinia) for any news about spotted Alpine Choughs with rings. Here it is the flier that we are going to hand out soon!

Cristina Vallino PhD student Departement of Life Sciences and Systems Biology University of Turin e-mail: crisval91@live.it Skype: crisval91@live.it ResearchGate:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cristina_Vallino twitter:  https://twitter.com/CristinaVallino P roject:  Climate change, phenology of reproduction and resource availability in alpine birds The study is carried out in two areas with different levels of anthropization. OBJECTIVE 1: to understand the relationships between food availability and Alpine Chough distribution assessing the presence or absence of phenological mismatch (potentially caused by climate change) between Alpine Chough's key-prey during the reproduction, grasshoppers, and the corvid. METHODS: A. altitudinal transects to know the spatio-temporal distribution of grasshoppers    B. telemetry an direct ob servations of colour ringed individuals to understand the habitat use C. isotope analysis and  barcoding on feathers and faeces t

The Choughbusters are working in Mont Avic Natural Park these days The weather situation is not so good and today we also had some rain in the field, but the snow is melting quickly (as shown by the pictures below) and we need to catch three more individuals for the radio-tags.  Enrico and I could observe several Alpine Choughs (flocks up to 12 individuals) feeding on grasslands but they feed especially near the snow-patches even now that there are fewer and fewer areas covered in snow. We decided to use the same method as the one we used in Cervinia (i.e. clap-nets with bread and raisins as bait) but here they are wary and avoid our nets trying to get around the trap with short hops. Even though they seem very interested in bread, they look at the nets carefully and they rarely go near them. Their gregarious spirit is manifest: they very seldom fly alone while there are usually couples or groups with some individuals flying and exploiting a patch together and when a member fl

                                           The area we used to place nets was free from snow As concern the catches, the project is moving ahead. The first days of fieldwork in Cervinia showed a completely different snow situation compared to the one we saw in Mont Avic (as shown in the picture above): Enrico and I were in the surrounding areas to the town, around 2000 masl and there were no snow at all. But fortunately as soon as we arrived, we saw small flocks of Alpine Choughs flying around over the cliffs and then landing on pastures and feeding. Therefore we placed the clap-net and the nylon nooses in the area just at the bottom of the cliffs on a flat grassland with a few bushes and we used big pieces of bread to catch their attention and raisins as baits.  They immediately seemed attracted by our baits and started flying over the zone. Unfortunately there were some other species interested in the food we left in the nets and in particular the zone was often freq