Dear all,

An adult female Amur Falcon trapped and fitted with a 5g satellite transmitter  (ID 95778) on 10 January 2010  in Newcastle (Natal, South Africa) is still alive and its tag is still sending fixes. It must be the bird with the longest working PTT of its size.

It stayed in the northern part of the Kruger NP in S. Africa from  the  afternoon of 3rd January until the morning of 9th January. On 9th January it flew 337 km to pass the night of 9th/10th January 2013 in some trees (26°12'57.6'' S/ 29°39'22.5''E, 1645 m ASL) near a farm 30 km NNE of Bethal from where we received several high quality (LC:2 and two LC:3) fixes. This place is only 170 km from Newcastle were it could have arrived this evening.

The bird has now been tracked three times each on spring and autumn migration across the Indian Ocean and to its breeding site in northern China.

By the way, all of a sudden five of our satellite-tracked Lesser Spotted Eagles have come into the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park area (Kruger NP and sourroundings). Has there been some rain recently? Up to now all these and other tracked LSEs remained much further north.

Kind regards,

Bernd Meyburg
Christiane Meyburg
Rina Pretorius
Paul Howey

BUMeyburg(at)aol.com
www.raptor-research.de