Michele Mendi

The species occupies for breeding various types of open habitats, with some tree cover: steppe and agricultural, pastures. Outside breeding season it occurs in grassland, savanna and scrubland, roosting colonially. Its breeding range extends from C Europe to NW China & C Siberia (Orta & Kirwan 2020).

In Europe, the species occurs in SE & E Europe, the strongholds being in S Russia (85% of the European population), Ukraine and Romania. Pannonian Plain also holds high abundances (Keller et al. 2020).

Eurasian-African migrant. All populations are migratory and winter in S Africa.

Its population trend is declining. Evaluated as “Vulnerable” (BirdLife International 2022).

Season of assessment

B

Population trendDecreasing
Population size
(min-max, best estimate)		115000-170000,140000
Red List categoryVU
Franks, S., Fiedler, W., Arizaga, J., Jiguet, F., Nikolov, B., van der Jeugd, Ambrosini, R, Aizpurua, O., Bairlein, F., Clark, J., Fattorini, N, Hammond, M., Higgins, D, Levering, H., Skellorn, W., Spina, F, Thorup, K. Walker, J., Woodward, I. and Baillie, S.R. (1) (2022) Online Atlas of the movements of European bird populations. https://migrationatlas.org EURING/CMS (1) Principal investigator
Map

Overall Connectivity for Red-footed Falcon

The species is a long-distance migrant, known for its irruptive migrations, all populations from its vast Palearctic breeding range winter in comparatively small region in S Africa (Golawski et al. 2017, Orta & Kirwan 2020). It is often encountered outside its regular breeding grounds.

C European breeders (mainly from Hungary) are encountered during autumn migration mostly in SC & SE Europe, while the recoveries from the W Mediterranean (Balearic Is) and NW Africa (Morocco) are mostly in spring. Recent data suggest a loop migration, the spring return being via W Africa and the C Mediterranean (Palatitz et al. 2018). In some years birds formed in big flocks take N routes in autumn making a pre-migratory loop movement to the Baltic coasts and back (Csörgo et al. 2009).

A clockwise loop migration has also been found in the birds breeding in N Kazakhstan too (Katzner et al. 2016).

Recoveries by Condition for Red-footed Falcon

Most encounters have been accumulated after 2007. They are obtained mainly during the breeding season, peaking in Jul (43% of all records). The bulk of encounters is recorded in C Europe (88%). In general, there are few recoveries before 1990. The encounters based on dead birds as a result of shooting stayed almost unchanged until 1990 (37-40%), then markedly decreased to less than 1% after 1991; those based on alive birds considerably increased over time – from 5% in 1961-1990 (there were none pre-1960) to 89% after 1991. The latter is mostly due to ringing recoveries, and especially to colour ring resightings – primarily in the countries with existing projects (Hungary, Italy).

Long-distance ring recoveries from African winter quarters S of Sahara apparently lacking.

Annual Movements for Red-footed Falcon

Post-breeding movements occur in the Baltic region, C & E Europe mostly in Aug-Sep.

Across the Mediterranean region, autumn migration takes place from mid-Sep to early Oct peaking in late Sep, while in spring, migration occurs from late Apr to mid-May with a peak in early May (Bounas et al. 2020). This is supported by encounters from Morocco and Spain to the Balkan Peninsula and Turkey.

Tracking data from birds breeding in N Kazakhstan show that autumn migration begins in early Sep with a westward trek, followed by S routes W of the Caspian Sea via the Middle East and NE Africa reaching their wintering grounds in S Africa in early Oct. Return migration starts in late Mar and follows more W routes, requiring crossing the Sahara and the C Mediterranean, the breeding sites in N Kazakhstan are reached in early May (Katzner et al. 2016).

Connectivity by Month by Region for Red-footed Falcon

Post-nuptial migration of Hungarian breeders has been tracked as far as S Ukraine (Fehérvári et al. 2014). Such movements (performed mainly by juveniles) irregularly take place also NW and N, reaching Germany, Denmark, SE Sweden and Poland, with encounters in late summer and early autumn. The same has been documented for the N Italian population as well (Kunze & Nennstiel 2020).

Birds breeding in C Europe take SW, S & SE routes during autumn migration, encounters from mid- to late autumn are available from the whole Mediterranean (a single African record from Morocco). Autumn migration could last – in the case of N Kazakhstan population – about a month, the S African wintering grounds are inhabited about six months (Katzner et al. 2016).

Breeding sites are reached mainly in mid- to late spring, sometimes early summer.

Boris Nikolov

References

Statistics Map
N records N individuals N recoveries
Mapped data*
Total available data
*Mapped data include only distant (>= 50 km) recoveries
References Map
2020 . European Breeding Bird Atlas 2: Distribution, Abundance and Change. European Bird Census Council & Lynx Edicions, BarcelonaEditor(s): Keller, V., S. Herrando, P. Voříšek, et al.
BirdLife International 2020 . Species factsheet: Falco vespertinus. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 26/01/2022.
Bounas, A., Solanou, M., Panuccio, M., Barišić, S., Bino, T., Erciyas-Yavuz, K., Iankov, P., Ieronymidou, C., Barboutis, C. 2020 . Mining citizen science data to explore stopover sites and spatiotemporal variation in migration patterns of the red-footed falcon. Current Zoology 66: 467–475
Csörgo, T., Karcza, Zs., Halmos, G., Magya,r G., Gyurácz, J., Szép, T., Bankovics, A., Schmidt, A. & Schmidt, E. 2009 . Magyar madárvonulási atlasz (Hungarian Bird Migration Atlas). Kossuth Kiadó, , Budapest
Fehérvári, P., Lázár, B., Palatitz, P., Solt,S., Nagy, A., Prommer, M., Nagy, K., Harnos, A. 2014 . Pre-migration roost site use and timing of post-nuptial migration of Red-footed Falcons (Falco vespertinus) revealed by satellite tracking. Ornis Hungarica 22: 36–47
Golawski, A., Kupryjanowicz, J., Szczypinski, P., Dombrowski, A., Mroz, E., Twardowski, M., Kielan, S., Antczak, K., Pagorski, P., Murawski, M. 2017 . Autumn Irruptions of Red-Footed Falcons Falco vespertinus in East-Central Poland. Polish Journal of Ecology 65: 423–433
Katzner, T.E., Bragin, E.A., Bragin, A.E., McGrady, M., Miller, T.A., Bildstein, K.L. 2016 . Unusual clockwise loop migration lengthens travel distances and increases potential risks for a central Asian, long distance, transequatorial migrant, the Red-footed Falcon Falco vespertinus. Bird Study 63: 406–412
Kunze, D., Nennstiel, L. 2020 . Recoveries of Ringed Red-Footed Falcons (Falco vespertinus) in Germany - An update documentation. AVES Braunschweig (11).
Orta, J. and G. M. Kirwan 2020 . Red-footed Falcon (Falco vespertinus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World Link to Article (DOI: https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.reffal1.01 ) Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA
Palatitz, P., Solt, S., Fehérvári, P. 2018 . The blue vesper. Ecology and Conservation of the Red-Footed Falcon. MME, Budapest, Hungary

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