Results Hungarian woodcock monitoring

Abstract

Hunting woodcock in spring is a centuries-old tradition in Hungary. However the EU Birds Directive (79/409/EEC) prohibits hunting during the migration to breeding areas. In order to regularly derogate the EU Birds Directive it was essential to start and maintain a country-wide monitoring system, and to estimate the size and the mortality of woodcock population migrating across Hungary. As there were no similar studies earlier we had a) to develop and test the workability of a long term monitoring programme of Woodcock migration in Hungary in spring and in autumn; b) to describe the dynamics of the migration; c) to detect and evaluate differences among years; d) to estimate the size of migrating population in spring and in autumn; e) to calculate the mortality as the difference of autumn and spring population. The monitoring programme started successftilly, and it is running on a national scale for five years now. We have chosen synchronous observation of flying birds from fixed points during the whole migration period. The observations were performed by local hunters weekly, they observers recorded data on standardized forms. We calculated the mean densities of contacts (woodcocks seen/hectare/hour) for each observation date in each county. Their distribution represents the temporal dynamics and intensity of migration. We estimated the migrating population size in two different ways. First, the densities at the peaks of migration were used for the estimation of a minimal population size. Second, the total population size was estimated using the densities calculated in the whole season. In both cases, the estimation relied on the densities multiplied by the total size of the forested areas in the country. We detected high variability of contacts in space and time, which fits to the former experience of woodcock hunters. It reflects the highly flexible migratory behavior of woodcocks. Observations in autumn can provide information about migration, but the simple comparison with spring data is problematic because of the behavioral differences. We were constrained to use literature data for the calculation of minimum and total number. According to our results, the hunting bag in Spring in Hungary may be far under the 1 % limit that was determined in the Guidance document of Birds Directive. We suppose that such a quantity does not threat the woodcock population.