News from Mont Avic

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 flies away, the others usually take off as well.

Yesterday we caught the first Chough in this study area and we named him Brad, after Brad Pitt since he was combative as the actor in "Fight Club" but today we had bad weather condition and the Choughs that were present seemed more defensive so in the end we didn't manage to catch them.

Tomorrow we'll go on with the traps here in Mont Avic but soon we also want to start radio-tracking and observation of the feeding behaviour.

The snow situation these days

The snow situation two weeks ago

Alpine Choughs looking for invertebrates 

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