ARCTIC BIRDS INTERNATIONAL BREEDING CONDITIONS SURVEY BULLETIN No
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CAFF Technical Report No.21 April 2010 ARCTIC BIRDS INTERNATIONAL BREEDING CONDITIONS SURVEY BULLETIN No. 11 Acknowledgements tat, c onulluptat,Quis The Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) is a Working Group of the Arctic Council. CAFF Designated Agencies: • Environment Canada, Ottawa, Canada • Finnish Ministry of the Environment, Helsinki, Finland • The Ministry of Domestic A"airs, Nature and Environment, Greenland • Faroese Museum of Natural History, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands (Kingdom of Denmark) • Icelandic Institute of Natural History, Reykjavik, Iceland • Directorate for Nature Management, Trondheim, Norway • Russian Federation Ministry of Natural Resources, Moscow, Russia • Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Stockholm, Sweden • United States Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage, Alaska CAFF Permanent Participant Organisations: • Aleut International Association (AIA) • Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC) • Gwich’in Council International (GCI) • Inuit Circumpolar Conference - (ICC) Greenland, Alaska and Canada • Russian Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) • Saami Council This publication should be cited as: Soloviev, M.Y. and Tomkovich, P.S. (eds.). 2010. Arctic Birds, #11 . CAFF Technical Report No. 21, CAFF International Secretariat, Akureyri, Iceland. Cover photo by Vasiliy Baranyuk. Incubating Common Eider on Wrangel Island in July 2008. For more information please contact: CAFF International Secretariat Borgir, Nordurslod 600 Akureyri, Iceland Phone: +354 462-3350 Fax: +354 462-3390 Email: ca"@ca".is Internet: http://www.ca".is Editing: Mikhail Soloviev and Pavel Tomkovich Design & Layout: Tom Barry and Mikhail Soloviev ___ CAFF Designated Area ARCTIC BIRDS Bulletin of the International Breeding Conditions Survey supported by the International Wader Study Group and Wetlands International's Goose and Swan Specialist Groups No. 11 • 2009 compiled by Mikhail Soloviev and Pavel Tomkovich A WORD FROM THE COMPILERS ing season with view of making inference about wader breeding success (see the paper by Clive Minton et al. The focus of this issue of the bulletin of the Arctic in this issue). This is probably one of the most elaborate Birds Breeding Conditions Survey (ABBCS) is the examples of such an assessment and has no analogues reproductive performance of birds in relation to their on other flyways. environment in the Arctic and Subarctic in summer 2008. Arctic terrestrial ecosystems are remarkable for Further efforts were made in 2009 to increase the effec- pronounced fluctuations in the abundance and/or pro - tiveness of the ABBCS as an information resource. The ductivity at their high trophic levels, in birds and mam- survey websites ( http://www.arcticbirds.net/ and http:// www.arcticbirds.ru /) were updated with information on mals. These unstable systems could have been expected distribution, abundance and breeding status of selected to show quick response to increasing temperatures and Arctic predators and prey species (owls, Arctic Fox, precipitation across most of the Arctic during the recent Rough-legged Buzzard, Pomarine Skua and grouse) for decades. However, so far, the results of observations on the years 1988–2008. All pages are available in both the impacts of climate change in terrestrial ecosystems the English and Russian languages. A system allowing are less alarming compared with the melting of sea- on-line access to the database on individual species of ice and impacts on marine animals ( http://www.arctic. birds (available at http://arctic.ss.msu.ru/birdspe c) was noaa.gov/reportcar d). Apparently, this is partly due to a re-designed with view of increasing the functionality limited current understanding of the response of Arctic of interactive maps. These maps now maintain a selec- wildlife and ecosystems to both natural and human-in- tion of sites during zooming and panning; a number of duced changes. Several activities implemented in the other minor changes was also made. This functionality framework of the International Polar Year 2007–2008 is pending further improvement, and we would appreci- were aimed at filling this gap, for example Arctic Wild - ate a feed-back from users on features most urgently re- life Observatories Linking Vulnerable EcoSystems quired. We would like to use the opportunity to remind (ArcticWOLVES). This project builds a network of cir - that on-line information on individual species of birds cumpolar wildlife observatories in order to assess the is entered exclusively from submitted questionnaires current state of Arctic terrestrial food webs over a large (Part 2), and encourage contributors to fill the latter. It geographical range (http://www.cen.ulaval.ca/arctic - is also advisable to use the current set of survey forms wolves/index.html). This and similar initiatives made (updated in March 2009) which, in the first place, will an important contribution to the geographic coverage make submitting information easier for respondents. by ABBCS in 2008, and we anticipate that coordinated In the meantime the first reports of bird breeding condi - monitoring in future will help to obtain a better pic- tions for season 2009 has been published to the ABBCS ture of ecosystem processes developing at a pan-Arctic websites. Many more observation points are needed to scale. discover patterns in bird breeding success and to relate Some population parameters of Arctic animals can be them to observed environmental factors. However, in currently evaluated only outside of the Arctic. A tradi- due time this process of long-term data accumulation tional contribution to the “Arctic Birds” bulletin was should enable us to make legitimate predictions about made by Australian colleagues, who measured juvenile response of Arctic bird communities to the current glo- proportions in wader populations during the non-breed- bal change. BULLETIN # 11 CONTENTS LOCALITY REPORTS............................................................................................................................3 BIRD BREEDING CONDITIONS IN THE ARCTIC IN 2008 P.S. Tomkovich & M.Y. Soloviev .............................................................................................................47 CONTACT INFORMATION.................................................................................................................55 WADER BREEDING SUCCESS IN THE 2008 ARCTIC SUMMER, BASED ON JUVENILE RATIOS OF BIRDS WHICH SPEND THE NON-BREEDING SEASON IN AUSTRALIA C. Minton, R. Jessop & C. Hassell .........................................................................................................53 INDEX OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES........................................................................................................63 INTERESTING LINKS AND PUBLICATIONS..................................................................................66 MAP COLLECTION.............................................................................................................................66 For the latest information about the survey and data access visit the websites: http://www.arcticbirds.net, http://www.arcticbirds.ru Please contact the project coordinators with queries, comments and proposals: Mikhail Soloviev Pavel Tomkovich Dept. of Vertebrate Zoology, Biological Faculty, Zoological Museum, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, 119991, Russia B.Nikitskaya St., 6, Moscow, 125009, Russia e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] Our most sincere thanks to everyone who participated in the survey in 2008 and/or previous years, in particular to V.G. Degtyarev, Y.V Krasnov, R. Lanctot and S.P. Paskhanly who stimulated others to join the survey. J. R. Wilson provided invaluable help by improving the English. Bird drawing on page 54 by E.A. Koblik. © 2009 International Wader Study Group 2 ARCTIC BREEDING CONDITIONS Figure. Arctic localities from which reports about bird breeding conditions in 2008 were provided LOCALITY REPORTS Skuas also showed a dramatic drop in numbers of territorial and breeding pairs. Only two nests of Long-tailed Skuas were 1. Varanger Peninsula, Norway (70°30′ N, 29°30′ E) found (ca. 0.1 pairs/km 2) compared to high breeding densi- Populations of the Norway Lemming*, Grey-sided Vole and ties the year before (ca. 1 breeding pair/km 2). Only two nests Tundra Vole that had the distinct peak of a 5-year cycle in of Rough-legged Buzzards were found compared to 5 nests 2007 crashed during early spring in 2008. Live lemmings in 2007. Seven pairs of Arctic Foxes were found to have es- were still seen on the snow surface in April and May, but the tablished on dens in April, but only two of them produced populations of both voles and lemmings had reached a bot- litters. 2008 appeared to be a very poor year for the Willow tom level when trapping was conducted at the end of June. Grouse as very few appeared to produce clutches. The ecological investigation on Varanger Peninsula is fo- R.A. Ims cused on food web dynamics, in particular, on the relation- ship between small rodent prey and their predators. Snowy 2. Gorodetsky Cape, Rybachy Peninsula, Kola Peninsula, Owls were present as late as early April 2008, thereafter they Russia (69°36′ N, 32°57′ E) were not seen. However, Snowy Owls were clearly fewer Based on observations on 9–20 June, the season was late and than at the same season in 2007, and they did not form pairs. cold. Air temperatures did not exceed +6°С in this period. Surveys for nests of Rough-legged