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DPA
Biologist Sacha Dench recently took to the skies in a powered paraglider to follow flights of swans on their 7,000-kilometre winter migration.
The number of Bewick’s swans migrating from the Russian tundra to north-western Europe fell by over a third between 1995 and 2010. The Flight of the Swans project by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) aims to draw attention to the dangers the species is facing on their journey.
These include a range of human threats, such as electrocution by high-voltage lines, lead poisoning and being shot at.
Dench, 41, took off from northern Russia in mid-September, and weeks later reached the German town of Balje on her way to cross the English Channel.
“It was the nicest thing I’ve done in my life,” she said of the expedition. At times, the swans flew in her slipstream.
“Bewick’s swans breed in northern Russia, near the Arctic Sea,” explains waterfowl expert Johannes Wahl from a German ornithology federation, the DDA.
The swans, with wingspans of almost 2 metres, move to their winter habitat together with their young every the autumn. Up to 11,000 of the birds stop off in Germany where they have ancestral breeding grounds.
Scientists from the WWT have discovered that every Bewick’s swan has a distinct beak marking. So each individual is not just a number, they has a face, so to speak. WWT gives them names.
“We know lots about their characters,” says Dench.
Over the course of decades, 10,000 of the animals have been “christened.” Like Martina II.
“She was fitted with a transmitter and died this migration season from an electric shock.”
Johannes Wahl adds that power lines are a great danger, particularly on the flight paths of the stopover sites. The swans risk seeing them too late – especially in the twilight or fog.
“Wind turbines in the migration corridor are also a danger.”
The stocks are also decimated by hunting. Predominantly in Russia, hunters like to shoot at tundra swans, Dench says. In western countries, shots are also fired, she says – sometimes out of ignorance.
“We need a higher standard of hunting training,” the biologist says. Many hunters lack knowledge about the individual bird species, which means that mistaken identity is bound to occur. The birds are not always killed by the bullets.
At the nature conservation centres run by the WTT, Bewick’s swans are caught and X-rayed.
“A third of them contain shot,” says Dench.
On her journey, Dench travels at heights of between 30 metres and 1 kilometre. The aircraft, which she calls a paramotor, can travel for up to three hours on one tank of fuel.
“It also depends on the wind.”
The paramotor’s speed varies between 22 and 55 kilometres per hour.
Dench says the alternation of natural areas and landscapes from a bird’s-eye perspective is fascinating.
“The shift goes from tundra to highly industrialized western
Europe.”
Despite the exertion, the Briton did not regret her draughty trip. Dench hopes that her expedition will also send a message for the protection of other migratory birds.
