Il tuo carrello è vuoto
Indigo, light brown, blue and black are the colors that distinguish the sea jay (Coracias garrulus After the beginning of spring, in april, they begin to arrive in Italy and Europe, from sub-Saharan Africa, from their wintering quarters, to establish nesting and breeding territories. The current breeding area includes the countries of the western Mediterranean, the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Russia, Turkey and part of the Middle East. Its arrival is synchronized with the arrival of the heat and with the peak of presence, in the fields, of invertebrates, which are its favorite food, even if it nourishes of small reptiles, frogs and small rodents. The nest, in which it lays 3-5 eggs, is built in natural or artificial cavities, close to open, uncultivated or cultivated areas, with little rainfall and little urbanization and it possible to locate it in trees, hay bales, walls, under bridges and viaducts.
Sometimes the cavity that will give hospitality to the nest can be actively dug into the earthy slopes. In recent years, to facilitate the settlement and reproduction, many nest boxes are placed by man in special places frequented by these magnificent birds. This practice is contributing to the progressive settlement and reproduction of a good population of specimens, even if this unfortunately triggers the appetites of poachers who take the pullets and then try to sell them to shady "passionate".
In fact, the case that occurred in the provinces of Rome and Rieti in 2018 is known, thanks to the intervention of LIPU volunteers and the forest police, 14 young pullets were seized from poachers and then reintroduced into nature in the areas where they had been taken. Today the Italian population is estimated at over 1000 breeding pairs. Despite the protection decreed, it is a special protected by the Birds Directive of the European Union, its population in Italy is stable and considered in danger. lo.
About its migratory labors an individual, monitored with a GPS device followed by the researchers of Ornis italica, traveled, between 2020 and 2022, 4 times in two years, the 8000 km that separated it from Botswana where it wintered and the nesting area in central Italy, with a journey that lasted two and a half months and always doing the same route.
My first encounter with this magnificent bird took place in the Tolfa Mountains, in the province of Rome, in an abandoned and ruined farmhouse where, to my great surprise, I identified more than 8 nests. I spent several hours observing their evolutions in the air, the courtships, the aerial and ground hunts, the in and out from the nesting cavities like arrows, the flight of the young and then the departure for the wintering areas between August and September, with the young born as big as the parents but with faded colors; of course I tried to immortalize all this avoiding even the slightest disturbance. It is an exciting experience to follow their wing slides, the catches on the fly of large insects, to hear their verse, made of a very particular “cra-cra”, even before seeing them, the evolutions of the males who, in flight, show off their magnificent colors to impress the females ... Today, unfortunately, that farmhouse no longer hosts any couple, as a motocross track has been built in its immediate vicinity; The disturbance caused by the engines of the motorcycles and the presence of many people have led to the abandonment of this site and the couples have, I hope, dispersed on other territories. My experience has seen them nesting in tree hollows, concrete holes in electric transformer boxes, nest boxes and wall holes; in the areas that I frequent in the province of Rome and Viterbo their presence is quite constant even if the density is extremely rarefied, probably also due to the reduction of potential nesting sites.
My hope is that this magnificent bird will continue to reproduce and increase its presence in our areas and throughout its nesting areas.
