Final report of the Roller territory mapping in 2010

Our programme ’s important purpose is to measure that Roller’s number who keep territories.Extended territory mapping never been done in Hungary before so we were not able to estimate the breeding Roller’s number. The Roller Territory Mapping of 2010 was a team- project including of rangers of the National Parks (KNPI & KNPMI) and voluntairs of Hungarian Birdlife.

The territory mapping has to extend to the nestbox-breeder birds so it’s very important to found all the natural cavity-breeder ones. The roller’s typical hunting strategy helps that. Roller is kind of a sentry-hunter bird so it’s always seen on outstanding points for example solitary trees, electric wires, poles for hunting insects and small animals. It’s very easy to observe the remarkable birds in the beginning of summertime. The method of territory mapping is to check twice all the suitable fields for Rollers before hatching their chicks. The first monitoring is at the end of May, the second is middle of June . All points are supposed to be put on record by GPS. All the point are analized by geographic information system (GIS) programme and breeding pairs’ number are determined by the territories. 

The method can be used only with limititations after the chicks are hatched because the male and female are moving very intensively on more extended territory.
2010 was a very special year in Hungary because of the very rainy and cold May. Those Rollers which occupied nestboxes on the first part of May left their territories according to destruction of the nests. They will start their second breeding somewhere else on the first part of June. Our team adapting to the Rollers started the work of territory mapping on June and July by the chicked were hatched out.

The population of Rollers based on the final of territory mapping was 364 pairs in Csongrád and Bács-Kiskunság conties.

We will repeat this survey in 2011 by the aims of the project.