Hiddensee bird observatory

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Island view from north to south
The ornithological station was housed in the monastery on Hiddensee .

The Hiddensee ornithological station is a scientific institution on the Baltic Sea island of Hiddensee . It belongs to the University of Greifswald and is operated by the University's Institute of Zoology . On behalf of the Hiddensee ringing center , the station identifies several thousand birds every year. Angela Schmitz Ornés and Martin Haase have been managers of the station since 2006, but have not been on site since 2007.

history

The ornithological station began its work on the island of Hiddensee in 1936 as the Hiddensee Biological Research Institute under the direction of Richard Stadie . It began in 1930, when the scientist Ulrich Leick founded the branch of the Institute for Plant Ecology at the University of Greifswald . The most important tasks were on the one hand active bird watching, on the other hand educational events such as multi-day seminars with lectures and site visits were carried out on the island. Research work was suspended at the beginning of the 1940s due to the military service of the male personnel.

Until after the Second World War, the facility was located in the south of the island of Hiddensee; In 1947 Robert Bauch took over the management of the Monastery Biological Research Station . Since 1948 there was an agreement between the ornithologists from Hiddensee and the ornithological station Helgoland to organize and carry out scientific bird ringing in Mecklenburg . In 1951 the station moved to the island and was now in the house by the sea in Kloster and developed into the only purely ornithological research facility in the GDR (from 1964). It was thus the only ornithological station in the GDR and at the same time its national ringing center, which issued its own bird rings .

As part of the third university reform in the GDR , the research institute on Hiddensee became an independent body of the Biology Section of the University of Greifswald in 1968 .

After the fall of the Wall , at the beginning of 1990, the Hiddenseer Ringing Center received an additional staff position, but the new federal republican order resulted in numerous legal, technical and organizational problems. The scientists working at Hiddensee, like all other East German researchers, were subjected to an evaluation by the Science Council of the Federal Republic of Germany . As a result, more and more employees left the ringing center working group . In 1992 the Hiddensee ornithological station was dissolved as an independent institution and incorporated into the newly founded Institute for Ecology (IfÖ). On July 1, 1993 ornithologist Andreas Helbig took over the management of the facility. The work of the Insel Group has been continued since 1994 by means of an administrative agreement between the five new federal states as a multi-country facility called the Hiddensee ringing center under the umbrella of the State Office for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Geology (LUNG) of the State of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the town of Kloster.

Working method

The institute started projects outside Germany before 1989 and also used the Hiddensee ring from the Hiddensee ringing center to mark birds on the Antarctic Peninsula , in Mongolia and on the high seas .

Since the mid-1990s, the scientists at Hiddensee have been involved in the following projects:

  1. Avifauna : here u. a. Plan observations of the visible bird migration, grid mapping of the breeding and winter birds on Hiddensee, regular water bird censuses and the publication of ornithological annual reports
  2. Studies of population genetics and tribal history, especially of birds of prey and sylviids , using molecular-biological methods ( DNA sequencing)
  3. Studies on migration strategies and resting place ecology of Limicolae , especially the Alps beach rotor , as a function of habitat and age of the animals by means of color marking and various field methods
  4. Studies on migratory phenology and migratory physiology of songbirds when crossing the Baltic Sea as part of an ESF project to research transcontinental small bird migration using a trapping station on the Greifswalder Oie .

After two scientists and a technician were initially active in the station on Hiddensee from the 21st century, the focus was on researching the tribal relationships of birds as well as molecular population genetics and speciation processes in birds . The station has not been manned continuously since 2007. The work is directed from the new headquarters in Greifswald ( Zoological Institute and Museum Vogelwarte Hiddensee , Soldmannstrasse 23).

literature

  • U. Köppen, M. Görner (Ed.): Vogelwarte Hiddensee. Eight decades of bird research in Germany , self-published in Jena, 2018.

Web links and sources

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hiddensee ornithological station. Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald, Department of Biology, accessed on September 1, 2014 . (As of 2014)
  2. ↑ Manfred Faust: Timeline The history of the island of Hiddensee. ( PDF , 55 kB) Retrieved July 11, 2010 .
  3. ↑ a b c Köppen: 70 years ornithological station ... , p. 124/125.

Coordinates: 54 ° 35 '23.3 "  N , 13 ° 6' 7.8"  E