Editorial by Davide Dominoni, Associate Editor of Avocetta, University of Glasgow

The Strait of Messina, in southern Italy, is a well-known migration hotspot for diurnal migrants such as raptors. Radar studies have also shown that there is a considerable rate of nocturnal passage of migrants during spring migration. During the spring season 2015, we combined mist net trapping with radar observations
at a site on the Calabrian side of the Strait, to characterize the species composition of nocturnally migrating passerines, and to investigate the relationship between the numbers of birds flying over and the ones stopping at the study site. Despite the radar counted nearly four millions tracks of birds flying overhead, only
242 individuals were captured with mist nets during the same period. Of these, only 70 (28.9 %) were potential migrants. There was no correlation between the number of daily captures and the number of tracks recorded by radar on the previous night. The application of radar observations clearly shows that a large proportion of passing migrants may go undetected when relying on counts of birds at a watchpoint for diurnal observations only. The Strait of Messina seems to be a passage site for nocturnally migrating birds including songbirds. However, most favourable stopover sites for these birds might be found further South, possibly not far from our study site.

An agroecosystem with high environmental heterogeneity located in the low Veronese Po plain (Italy) was monitored over a seven-year period, from 2013 to 2019. In the study area three transects representative of three types of environment were selected: arboreal-shrubby hedge, cultivated land, and linear wood. Using a line transect method, five visits were made in each breeding season. For each habitat type, the following indices were calculated: Richness, Relative species frequency, I.K.A., Abundance and Density of territorial males, and Shannon Diversity. A total of 39 breeding species were registered. Whittaker’s diagrams highlighted the presence of high levels of richness and diversity in the linear wood and arboreal-shrubby hedge environments. The cultivated area hosts species considered as bioindicators of highly extensive agricultural environments. The characteristics of the arboreal-shrubby hedge seemed optimal to support a well-structured and
stable bird community, and some typical species of hedges such as Sylvia communis and Luscinia megarhynchos had reached I.K.A. comparable to the highest recorded in Italy. The trends of the main parameters of all three communities did not show statistically significant fluctuations in the years of sampling. The results show a high degree of general ecological interest and conservation importance of the study area, also in comparison of other similar Italian agroecosystems, since we found 14 breeding species of high conservation concern, among which three included in Annex 1 of the 2009 Directive / 147 / EC.

The diet of the Eurasian Spoonbill Platalea leucorodia is poorly documented with only the most common prey groups known, namely small fishes, amphibians, reptiles, crustaceans, molluscs, worms, leeches and plant material. Here, three small crustaceans, Branchiopoda Triops cancriformis (Notostraca), Chirocephalus diaphanus (Anostraca), and Cyzicus tetracerus (Spinicaudata) are documented as prey of the Eurasian Spoonbill in a temporary wetland near the San Teodoro salt pan (Marsala, western Sicily). These observations provide a new insight into the foraging ecology of the species, showing its extreme opportunism in targeting small prey when feeding in a temporary wetland system.

Birds require calcium carbonate for skeleton and egg development. For this reason, cuttlebones of Sepia cuttlefish can be considerate a dietary supplement and often bear signs of pecking by birds (mainly gulls and other seabirds). Due to the different structure of cuttlebones (dorsal vs. ventral regions), I hypothesized that birds peck more intensely the anterior and ventral part these being softer and thicker. On a sample of 89 cuttlebones of Sepia cuttlefish, a relatively high percentage (88.8%) showed pecking signs by birds. All cuttlebones pecked showed signs on the ventral part while signs on the dorsal part were observed in significantly lower frequency. In the ventral part, no significant differences were found between the anterior and the posterior region. The longest cuttlebones showed a significant higher frequency of pecking signs, likely because of the longest cuttlebones are also those with greater thickness (and, therefore, with higher availability of
calcium aragonite). These are the first evidences from Mediterranean area. Since expanded polystyrene, an increasingly abundant anthropogenic debris in natural environments, was often pecked because confused with cuttlebones, our first data may have conservation implications in the disciplinary arena of marine/beach
litter research.

Subsequent to the publication of the following paper in Avocetta, the authors were made aware of an error in the dataset affecting the results presented in Table 4. After re-analysing the data, the new dataset failed to uphold the original conclusions and the authors have requested a retraction of the original manuscript to sustain the integrity of their findings.

Panter, C.T., Atkinson, E.D. & White, R.L. 2019. Quantifying the global legal trade in live CITES-listed raptors and
owls for commercial purposes over a 40-year period. Avocetta 43(1): 23-36. Doi: https://doi.org/10.30456/
AVO.2019104

Both the high-level strategies promoted by experts of public Conservation Agencies, and the small-scale tactics implemented by local conservation groups show strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that can affect the effectiveness of the efforts aimed at the conservation of plovers nesting on sand dunes
(Charadrius alexandrinus and Charadrius dubius). Here we propose a SWOT analysis, focusing on critical conditioning factors that should contribute towards rendering effective the local conservation strategies: (1) experts should learn the tools of project management, thus avoiding both ‘analysis-paralysis’ and ‘epistemic arrogance’
towards local volunteers, and using a simplified scientific language to communicate smart operational guidelines to the people; (2) editorial times necessary to draft guidelines should be shortened because sand-dune bird species urgently need tools for rapid actions; (3) in conservation strategies, ‘monitoring’ means verifying
changes in an environmental target in the expected direction defined by specific project objectives (it is not only a periodical field sampling of biodiversity targets). In this regard, experts should monitor not only the status of plovers (pairs, nests and chicks) but above all the effectiveness of conservation actions carried out; (4)
local volunteers, often highly motivated towards these charismatic species, have scarce knowledge, lack skill and funding availability; therefore constituting an underutilized human potential whichshould be supported and adequately trained by technicians in order to allow a fine-grained pervasive conservation of these declining species.

This column aims to collect a series of interesting observations and to make it accessible to the scientific community in future. We collect observations without time, space or species limitation but we focus on a limited series of category of interest. See more on Avocetta website: https://www.avocetta.org/bird-news-column