Monitoring the Activity of European Rollers During Nesting Period
Robert Kovacs, David Grabovac

The aim of this research project was monitoring the behavior of the European Roller (lat. Coracias Garrulus) in artificial cavities during the nesting period. European Roller is a highly endangered species (IUCN NT status). On the territory of Vojvodina, Serbia currently there are only around 110 nesting pairs.

European Roller (photo Arno Meintjes)

CAD model of the optical gate

The implemented system logs the number of the entries-exits through the cavity hole, using an optical gate sensor. Every record has a time stamp accompanied with the actual temperature data. The device is battery powered and designed to be fully autonomous during the nesting period (approx. two months). The data is stored on a memory card for later analisys.

Deployed system

Our electronic logger with ATmega8 and real time clock

results:

After the nesting period, we analysed the collected data. We recorded very high activity during the feeding period, of about 1500-2000 entries per day. Notable finding is the high overnight activity of the birds, that what was not reported in the literature before.

Fig 1. Daytime activity.

Fig 2. Nighttime activity.

*The project was realized in cooperation with the ornithologist association Riparia from Subotica, Serbia.