Bustard canepetière

The bustard canepetière ( Tetrax tetrax ) is the only species of the kind Tetrax . It is one of the birds most threatened of the cultivated plains of France.

Characteristics

Length: 40 - 45 cm
Scale: 83 - 91 cm
Weight: 600 - 900 gr.

Food

Sheets and starts-up, mainly of Leguminous plants and Brassicacées. Strong consumption of insects at the time of the season of reproduction. The chicks are primarily insectivorous.

Habitat

Rather dry areas with vast extended from grass or cereals. Attend the aerodromes for want of anything better.

Reproduction

Function in the form of lek. In spring, the male in bridal plumage roughcasts the feathers of the neck and lance with regular interval a " prêt" dryness. The females are very discrete during this period. The nest is a hollow on the ground receiving 3 to 5 eggs in a laying from April at mid-August. The females only deal with the breeding of the young people.

Statute and protection

This species was the subject a long time of a intensive Chasse but they is especially the modifications of the cultivation methods (intensification of the cultures and the use of the Pesticide S and Insecticide S) which contributed to its fast decline: fall of 70% of manpower in the thirty last years .

Many work is undertaken to try to save the species in France, in particular in the areas of the West and the Center (population of migratory birds, spending the winter to Spain), and in the South, where one finds the largest population in Crau (between Arles and Marseilles).

In the Département of the Gard, which accommodates more than 600 birds, one notes a strong dynamism of the population which one can allot to several crucial factors:

- the availability in insects, in particular the Ephippigère S, of large grasshoppers without wings, because of abandonment of many agricultural pieces, therefore of untreated zones,
- the installation of a hunting preserve in the East of Nimes: from 1998 to 2005, the group of wintering passed from 3 birds to more than 300!

In the Department of Charente on two Natura zones 2000, that of Villefagnan on 9531 ha and that of the plain of Barbezières to Gourville on 8108 ha, an important action of safeguarding of the Bustard canepetière was undertaken, from conventions were passed with the farmers to modify dates of mowings and to mow interior of the field towards outside for thus letting the birds escape. Since 2005, a program Life Nature for the safeguard of the species is in hand on the protection zones special of Charente but also of Charente Maritime and Vienna. In Two Sevres, the special protection zone of Southern Niort East profits from a research program on the birds of plain in general and the bustards in particular since 1996.

See too

Taxonomic references

External bonds

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