October 2009: All of the herons are south of the Sahara. In general, there were no real movements during the first few days of October. Mustapha, however, made further progress south and reached Sierra Leone by 4 October; last year he was in the same area on 6 October. During the middle of October, few of the herons made any significant movements. Exceptions were Mustapha, who returned to the same area close to Baoma in Sierra Leone. Karen also moved, to Tilogne in Senegal and in the last week of October, Rudi made a short trip along the Senegal River to Dagana and the same area where he spent the winter of 2008.
September 2009: All herons arrived safely south of the Sahara. Karen was the last one to depart from the Netherlands and arrived at 18 September in South Mauritania. Karen was our first heron to have been equipped with a satellite transmitter. This bird has already given us a lot of new information on habitat use, site tenacity and routes that Purple Herons use on their annual migration. Within our project, this is the third time one of our birds has crossed the Sahara successfully.
During the last two non-breeding seasons she stayed at the same area in Guinea. We will see if she will use the same area again. Additionally, Karen has led us to discover a new breeding colony site in the Netherlands. We found about 20 pairs, which account for about 3% of the Dutch population. All herons are at this moment in the Sahel most of them at the northern edge at temporary wetlands. It is interesting to see how close these herons are to each other at this moment. Fortunately there have been some rains in this region providing some wadis and oases with water. We will now see if the herons will move further south. It will be interesting to get information on site tenacity as we will follow some herons already a second or even a third non-breeding (northern winter) period.
August 2009: The first Purple Heron took off for its flight towards Africa. Rudi left the Netherlands at a day with reasonable migration of Purple Herons southwards. At some bird observatories more than hundred migrants were counted at Saturday 29th. In the morning of 31 August Rudi was already in northern Spain. He more or less took the same route as in 2008. In 2008 he stayed some time in the Ebro Delta, but he skipped Spain and at 3 September the heron was flying over Morocco towards the Sahara.
July 2009: Just as we gave the news about the northward travel of Lena to Mali, a few days later the bird moved back to Ivory Coast again! On the 21 July the heron was back in Ivory coast. We even were confused if the data were correct but some intermediate points and more than one point in Mali confirmed its movements and short trip to Mali.
Last week Lena started moving again! The heron moved northwards to Mali again, just like last year. The others are still at their breeding colonies in the Netherlands. The journeys that each of the herons made to get back to their breeding colony can be viewed on their individual pages, which can be accessed via the "Birds We Follow" drop-down menu above. Through following the birds' migration routes and timing we can gain important information about the network of wetlands that this species uses throughout the year. Not all of the herons have made the journey back to the breeding colony this year. Lena has so far remained in her non-breeding area in the Ivory Coast, in the area where she had spent much of last non-breeding (northern winter) period. Further signals show that she remains in that area, but unfortunately, we have yet to hear from Terra Nova.