SPECIES

The Scopoli’s shearwaters (Calonectris diomedea) is an endemic procellariform seabird breeding in the heavily exploited Mediterranean Sea and wintering in the south Atlantic Ocean. Scopoli’s shearwaters perform a long and intensive breeding season. Monogamous pairs lay a single egg in late May and the full-grown chick fledges in October. During incubation, parents alternate incubation duties; […]

The lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni) is a small, long-distance migratory and colonial-breeding falcon that breeds from southern Europe into the steppes of central Asia. Lesser kestrels chiefly winter in the Sahelian belt. The species is highly suitable to investigate behavioural and ecological processes for a number of reasons: it breeds in large colonies and readily […]

The Mediterranean storm petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis) is a very small (~28 g), highly secretive seabird. It spends most of its life offshore, only coming to land during the breeding season at night. As a result, very little is known about its behaviour and habits. In common with other Procellariiformes, storm petrel pairs share parental […]

The purple heron (Ardea purpurea) depends strictly on high-quality wetlands, a habitat type that has been dramatically declining worldwide, but at a steeper rate in Europe. Purple herons perform long-distance trans-Saharan migrations with astonishing high performances in terms of migration speed and duration. Despite the fact that its large size (~1kg) and wing-ratio may suggest […]

The black-legged kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) is a pelagic species of gull that breeds in the arctic and sub-arctic and spends the non-breeding season in the open ocean of the north Atlantic and Pacific. The species has been well-studied across its range owing to its ubiquity and accessibility, breeding in large, dense colonies and readily occupying […]