Branta Issues > Issue №1 (1998)

European Levant Sparrow-Hawk in the former Soviet Union. Report 1. Numbers and distribution

Belik V.P.,Vetrov V.V.

This work is a first report on the European Levant Sparrow-Hawk, in which the materials for the period since the second half of last century till 1986 has been analysed and made into a whole. On the basis of literary sources, the authors’ own data, unpublished materials of other researchers, the analysis of collections from the repositories of zoomuseums and institutes of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Moscow, St Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don, the boundaries of the nesting area of the species throughout the extent of the Eurasian area are being verified. In general, it actually coincides with the northern boundary of the forest-steppe zone. The optimum of the area lies in the steppe zone, where, in the flood-lands of large southern rivers, mosaic forest-meadow landscapes are greatly developed. These habitats are necessary for the Levant Sparrow-Hawk. They combine with above- floodland arenas, rich in food (lizards). The demands of the species to biotopes and their principal characteristic features are considered in details.

For some parts of the area (the flood-lands of the Don and Siverskyi Donets), original data on the number and nesting density in 1979-1986 are given. A general appraisal of the species number for the European part of the former USSR is represented.