100 stories from the hiking route

1969 – Kabli bird station is built

Information

Topic

People and nature

Coordinates

Long-Lat WGS 84

Latitude: 58.0140944

Longitude: 24.4498389

L-EST 97

x: 6430393.9
y: 526589.5

Location

Ikla-Aegviidu Hiking route

The bird station was built in 1969 upon the initiation of Henn Vilbaste, a long-term director of the Nigula Nature Reserve. The main goal of establishing the bird station was to study the abundance of the great tit as a model species.
The birds are caught with a 17-metre-high and 28-metre-wide mesh trap and are then studied, banded and released. Birds often gather near the coast during migration, as it acts as a guiding line for the rest of their journey.
Over 100 species of birds have been banded here over the years. Kabli has been the initial place of finding the woodchat shrike, yellow-browed and Pallas’ leaf warblers, Siberian tit and the red-tailed shrike. Thousands of messages on re-finding have been received about the banded birds. Many of the re-findings are from other bird stations around the Baltic Sea which enables calculating the migration speed of the birds and observing the migration in time and space in cooperation with other bird stations.
Goldcrests, great and long-tailed tits have been banded the most at the Kabli bird station. The most important research topic at the Kabli bird station is partial migration – why do some individuals remain here while others travel hundreds and thousands of kilometres.
Birds are great indicator species that provide information on changes in the environmental status. The data collected in Kabli is important from the aspect of monitoring thanks to the long data row that helps provide information on the population changes of bird species that are small in number or that nest in a dispersed manner.

Sources:
Website of Kabli bird station – kabli.nigula.ee
Vainu, O. 2012. 100 aastat lindude rõngastamist Eestis. Eesti Loodus no. 12
Alunurm, M. 2005. Kabli küla läbi aegade