The Long-Term Monitoring of Bird Populations on Kolguev Island in the Barents Sea

Abstract

Kolguev Island (69˚05′ N 49˚15′ E) is located in the Pechora Sea, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea. The island’s ecosystem is unusual due to the total absence of rodents and specialized predators such as weasels, while non-specialized predators such as Arctic (Vulpes lagopus) and red (V. vulpes) foxes and Rough-legged Hawk (Buteo lagopus) are common. Currently, 111 bird species have been registered here, of which 58 are nesting. The absence of rodents and the relatively stable predation pressure have resulted in the high abundance of many bird species: Willow Ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus), several goose species, some waders, and passerines. Over the 125-year history of ornithological studies on Kolguev, the island avifauna has changed significantly. The trend of an increase in the proportion of widespread and Siberian species together with a decrease in the proportion of Arctic species was observed. Since 2006, a thorough monitoring of Kolguev avifauna has been carried out, during which the dynamics of the bird population densities have been traced. The abundance of Black-bellied Plover (Pluvialis squatarola) and Dunlin (Calidris alpina) decreased, while the numbers of Barnacle Goose (Branta leucopsis) have increased sharply since the 1980s. The breeding density of Rough-legged Hawk has also increased in recent years. The long-term monitoring of Kolguev ecosystems has indicated the high international conservation value of the island due to the high breeding density of many bird species. Our study, covering more than a century of avifaunal studies with almost annual monitoring over the past three decades, provides an unusually long and detailed time-series for an Arctic island.

Barnacle geese Branta leucopsis breeding on Novaya Zemlya: current distribution and population size estimated from tracking data

“…The number of nesting barnacle geese on Kolguev Island has been monitored irregularly since 1989 and annual monitoring has been conducted since 2006 (Kondratyev et al 2013(Kondratyev et al , 2019(Kondratyev et al , 2021Glazov et al 2021). Using a combination of area counts and counts on transect lines, estimates were made for the number of breeding birds in the large breeding colony at the Peschanka River mouth in 2006 and 2019.…”

“…With the range expansion in the Russian Arctic at the end of the twentieth century, barnacle geese also started to breed in new nesting habitats including coastal salt marshes and on sandy islands (Syroechkovsky 1995;van der Jeugd et al 2003). With a continuing population increase in the start of the twenty-first century the geese colonized more habitats, and colonies appeared under steep slopes with breeding peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) and rough-legged buzzards (Buteo lagopus), as well as in inland sedge-moss bogs (Kondratyev et al 2013(Kondratyev et al , 2019(Kondratyev et al , 2021Glazov et al 2021). This has coincided with rapid growth of local breeding populations, as can be observed on Kolguev Island, where the breeding population has grown from 200 nesting pairs observed in 1994 (Syroechkovsky 1995) to 86,000 pairs in 2019 (Kondratyev et al 2021).…”