0000000001032811
AUTHOR
S. Bondì
The diet of Saker Falcon Falco cherrug overwintering in the Mediterranean (Sicily)
The winter diet of Saker Falcon Falco cherrug in the Mediterranean basin is unknown. Thanks to satellite tracking of two individuals from Hungary to Sicily, during winters 2012-13 and 2013-14 we identified the roost and collected 40 pellets. Pellet analysis allowed identification of 124 prey belonging to 29 taxa. Saker Falcons during winter shift their alimentation to insects and birds, with respect to mammals in the breeding season, plundering from small beetles to rabbits. Insects, especially Orthoptera and Coleoptera, were the most frequent prey in both years, totalling the 66.9% of remains. Among vertebrates the Saker Falcons preyed upon birds (21.77%), mammals (5.65%) and reptiles (4.8…
Status of the Golden Eagle Aquila chrysaetos in Sicily
In the present work, we review all the relevant information since the first Regional Atlas of breeding birds (Massa 1985), and we add field data on the species occurrence and site occupancy relative to the period January 2014-December 2016, in order to update the species’ status in Sicily.
Factors affecting the diet of Peregrine Falcon in Italy
The diet of top predators can provide useful information on phenology and abundance of their prey. The cosmopolitan and specialist Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) is an ideal model to assess whether food changes have occurred in the long-term. In this contribution, we reviewed all available literature on Peregrine Falcon diet in Italy which contained 11 detailed datasets useful for our review, and also included analysis of pellets, collected at three breeding sites of Sicily during 2014 and 2015. These data allowed us to shed light on the Peregrine Falcon’s diet over the last forty years (1978-2015). We calculated the numerical and biomass percentage of the resident and not-resident pre…