Stork scientist Maro Kochinyan meets with a village "researcher."
Across Armenia, from Novoseltsovo and Hovtashat to Areni, locals call Lusine Stepanyan and Maro Kochinyan “stork girls.”
Each year since 2005, the young scientists visit virtually every area where storks nest in Armenia and distribute special calendars among the residents living near the nests. These so-called “nest neighbors” fill in crucial data regarding stork movements in the calendars. That information includes the return date of the storks, the starting date of breeding, the first day they see the nestlings, the first day of nestlings’ flight, the date of the storks’ departure, as well as the number of the nestlings and whether they threw eggs or nestlings out of the nest.
The unique research-public education project is run through American University of Armenia’s Acopian Environmental Research Center. Researchers use the information to study the patterns of migratory birds.
“We decided to study a widely-spread species rather than a rare bird or a species on the verge of extinction. It would enable us to see how the changes in the environment affect the number of birds and their nestlings,” said Karen Aghababyan, senior avian researcher at the research center.
Armenia is well-suited for such research because it has a large stork population evenly spread throughout the country, allowing researchers to examine the bird in a large and diverse area, he continued.
“The stork lives as a bird of prey. That is why we can see how they are affected by stable chemical pest-killers or heavy metals because the latter are accumulated in the birds in the food chain.”
Aghababyan said that recent data shows some interesting trends, including that in the last four years there is an increase in the number of storks.
“Besides, not only the number of couples, but also the number of nestlings has gone up,” Aghababyan said. There are a few reasons for this change. He says that the increase in the number of storks is firstly conditioned by the increase in available food, which, Aghababyan believes, is influenced by global warming.
“That is to say there are more insects that cause an increase in the number of frogs that are food for storks. In some places the increase in the number of storks may also be conditioned by the existence of poultry and fish farms that are surrounded by large quantities of food wastes.”
Aghababyan mentioned that some storks in Armenia living next to poultry farms are so well-fed, they don’t migrate to Africa at all, even for the winter.
Breaks in the pattern can offer important scientific information not just about the species, but also about the environment. For example, AUA researchers have noticed that there are storks in the Ararat Valley and Vayots Gorge that hatch out few or no nestlings whatsoever, which can indicate the use of illegal pesticides such as DDT, or other heavy metals that are harmful to the environment.
“The polluted area can be 20 kilometers away, but these substances come to the storks by water flow. Or else the stable organic chemical weed- and pest-killers that remain in the earth for a rather long period of time may come out and harm the storks because of a change in the use of land ,” Aghababyan said.
However, Stepanyan (one of the aforementioned “stork girl” researchers) cautions that four years is a very short period of time to draw serious conclusions on the influence of environmental changes on storks.
“In order to have a comprehensive picture we must study the storks for at least 20-25 years,” Stepanyan said.
The center is also able to provide aid for storks that are sometimes injured hitting high voltage cables near where they build their nests. However, the people who care for storks mostly inform the staff of the Center who treat the injured birds with the assistance of the Biodiversity Center functioning at the RA Botanical Institute.
“Last year we rehabilitated eight storks and successfully released them where we had caught them,” Aghababyan said.
Back in the villages, researchers Kochinyan and Stepanyan have made friends with all the “nest neighbors.” The young women said that it was difficult at the beginning; when they were distributing calendars, villagers demanded payment. The girls are proud that they have managed to convince all nest neighbors to become volunteers, and haven’t paid anyone to do the work.
“Now it is much easier, we already know how to speak to the people. We talk cordially to one, we explain things scientifically to another,” Stepanyan said.
The majority of the population treats the storks very well, say the researchers, for traditionally the stork has been the symbol of luck and success. For example, in the village of Apaga, in Armavir province, storks often build their nests on the roofs of farmers’ houses, sometimes blocking the gutters. Even though the houses of the villagers get wet, they never remove stork nests.
“When the stork does not come back, many people relate all their failures to it. However, there are people whom storks disturb. For example, the birds break the glasses of someone’s greenhouse. They strike against them with force or carry heavy objects and drop them on the glass,” Stepanyan said. In some villages in the Ararat Valley, AUA researchers have actually documented villagers eating the bird.
But the majority of the Armenian rural population admire storks and consider them “beautiful birds,” such as Gohar Hayrapetyan, 41, a villager of Hovtashat, Ararat province.
Hayrapteyan said that she worked and at the same time enjoyed the view of the storks that had nested on the post in her vegetable garden.
“I draw parallels with our life. I watch them building their nests bringing in twigs, hatching out their young, and then the young ones leave. Just like people,” Gohar said.
-By Siranuysh Gevorgyan/ArmeniaNow.com
Our last issue of This Month in Armenia is devoted to protecting the environment, in honor of World Environment Day on June 5, including the following stories:
