Avifauna of Tver Region (Russia) - Its past and present

Vogelwelt. 2017. Vol. 137. No. 2. P. 198–200.

Zinoviev A.

Aside of scarce reports on birds of the Tver Region in medieval and 18 th century sources, the real monitoring of the regional fauna has started in the second half of the 19 th century. Since the first relatively long list of birds, which contained 154 avian species, was published by A. Dyakov in 1878, the number of birds recorded in the Tver Region has increased to 275 species. Although not all of them are nesting or have nested in the region, bird populations and their distribution dynamics show certain trends during the last one and a half centuries. The beginning of 20 th century in the Tver Region was marked by the presence of a number of avian species typical for the more southern forest-steppe regions. European Roller and Eurasian Scops Owl, as well as European Bee-eater have never been recorded nesting in those numbers again. Also White Stork started to nest in the region in 1930s and since then has expanded its nesting range over the entire region; today the White Stork breeding population is estimated to comprise 200-230 pairs. Moreover, two dove species demonstrate an interesting case. Eurasian Collared Dove populated the Tver Region in the 1970s and reached a population peak in the 1980s, when the region harbored about 100 nesting pairs. Than the number of doves abruptly declined during the early 1990s and today the species has completely disappeared from the region. European Turtle Dove demonstrates a similar case. Being numerous by the end of the1980s it has now almost disappeared from the Tver Region. These and other results of the long-term monitoring of birds in the Tver Region show that population and distribution dynamics not only related to climate changes, but also to the type and intensity of human activities.

Keywords: natural history, TVER REGION, Avifauna