Gangway for birds

Italiano

At sunset, in summer, lots of birds choose to "have dinner" in our reserve. Our researchers trap  them in a net, then measure them, put a small ring on their leg and give them freedom.
In that way we can study birds' populations and discover their migratory paths.
Children and bird-watchers are allowed to assist these operations, supported by an English speaking ornithologist

The ringing centre of "Fondotoce"

It is in the middle of the Nature Reserve of Fondotoce, where some ornithologists study and ring some migratory birds, that here have their nests and find their ideal place to stop during migrations. By the end of the summer, in the early evening, hundreds of birds gather in flights in the sky, before starting their journey to their winter destinations, offering a marvellous show and an opportunity of catching and ringing them, after examining them accurately and taking note of all details necessary to their classification. During the meeting with the skilful ornithologists, we will be able to admire this marvellous natural show and to follow the delicate steps of catching, ringing and following liberation of birds.

• Subjects: the natural alluvial plane of the Toce river - the activity in the birds ringing station.
  • The alluvial plane and the river's mouth, consisting of residual wet lands kept untouched from chaotic urbanization, are of vital importance for wild life's preservation, being in absolute the most productive ecosystem, in terms of biomass, on earth. Their importance is given also by the role that they play in the water’s cycle and floods’ regulation.
    The route touches some typical example of wet lands:
    
    
  • The fluvial forest , composed quite only by willow, some black and white alders and poplars too. All of them are tree able to stand periodic inundations. This kind of wood, today reduced to short and discontinuous borders, once paralleled the whole course of the rivers.
    
    
  • The reed is the most extended on the western side of the Lago Maggiore. It is the most typical swampy habitat and can be observed here in its several developing stages: open, near the lake; populated exclusively of reeds, and nearly dry towards the land, where it is gradually invaded by bushy willows.
    The cariceto-junceto is a damp grass field that replaces the reed near the dry land and prepare the soil for the takeover of the forest. This vegetation can be seen from the road to camping Isolino. This field has been let uncultivated in last years, so wild plants are sprout.
    
  • Near the mouth of the emissary channel of the Lago di Mergozzo an endemic variety of water chestnut is present: the Trapa natans verbanensis that in summer covers large areas of standing waters.
    
    
  • Realized within the Interreg II program between Italy and Helvetic Confederation the ringing center works using a floating gangway that crosses the reed thicket, on which 300 meters of nets for the capture of the avifauna are posed.
    The center allows to study birds’ populations during their movements between the nesting and wintering quarters and to systematically check the avifauna of the Lago Maggiore.
    During the excursion visitors are allowed to observe most of the routine’s operations that researchers do: delicate extraction of the birds from the nets, biometric gauge of sex, age, weight, length of the wing, spout and leg, filling of the detailed form that will be send to the National Institute for the Wild Fauna of Bologna and the release of birds to freedom.

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