{"id":7101,"date":"2012-03-26T20:57:41","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T18:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=7101"},"modified":"2019-12-22T22:11:44","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T09:11:44","slug":"spring-has-arrived-on-the-rhine-delta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/spring-has-arrived-on-the-rhine-delta\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring has arrived on the Rhine Delta"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

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Male Black Kite (Milvus migrans) chasing off a pair of Carrion Crow on the Rhine Delta in Vorarlberg, Austria<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

The last week has been exceptionally mild with early morning temperatures around +5 degrees Celsius and warming up to the mid teens in the afternoons.<\/p>\n

Combined with brilliant sunshine and birdsong all around, the consensus is that spring has well and truly arrived on the Rhine Delta.<\/p>\n

My first encounter this morning was with a pair of Black Kites busy nest building. At least the female was busy collecting roots from a nearby plowed field.<\/p>\n

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The male was positioned high up in an adjacent tree just watching the progress and occasionally chasing off the odd, trouble-making carrion crow. In the same area I must have counted at least 4 pairs of Black Kites, all busy nest building, each in its own isolated, tall tree.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Male Black Kite (Milvus migrans) chasing off a pair of Carrion Crow on the Rhine Delta in Vorarlberg, Austria<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Female Black Kite (Milvus migrans) collecting nesting material on the Rhine Delta in Vorarlberg, Austria<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Male Black Kite (Milvus migrans) chasing off a pair of Carrion Crow on the Rhine Delta in Vorarlberg, Austria<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Male Black Kite (Milvus migrans) chasing off a pair of Carrion Crow on the Rhine Delta in Vorarlberg, Austria<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

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Yet another plowed field was occupied by a flock 20 to 30 Lapwing, actively feeding on the wireworm and other delicious creatures exposed by the farmer’s recent plowing activity.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

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Yet another plowed field was occupied by a flock of curlew. I estimated the number of Curlew in the range 70 to 100. Curlew normally spend the winter on the Rhine Delta even in the coldest weather.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last week has been exceptionally mild with early morning temperatures around +5 degrees Celsius and warming up to the mid teens in the afternoons. Combined with brilliant sunshine and birdsong all around, the consensus is that spring has well and truly arrived on the Rhine Delta. My first encounter this morning was with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":2192061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Black_Kite-10.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}