Breeding success of Eleonora’s falcon in Cyprus revisited using survey techniques for cliff-nesting species

The global breeding population of Eleonora’s Falcon (Falco eleonorae) is distributed from the Canary Islands in the west, across the Mediterranean Sea, to Cyprus in the east. The remoteness of nesting colonies, which are predominantly located on sea cliffs and islets, renders breeding success estimation a challenging task, requiring a composite approach to assess each of the breeding stages. Early estimates of the breeding success of Eleonora’s Falcon suggested that the Akrotiri colony in Cyprus had the lowest breeding success among all the colonies throughout the species’ breeding range, at a level seemingly unsustainable, suggesting the colony might have been in danger of gradual extinction. Here we use a diversity of survey methods including boat, ground, and aerial surveys, with the incorporation of photography and photogrammetry, to reassess the breeding success and the effect of nest characteristics on the Eleonora’s Falcon breeding population in Cyprus. During a 6-yr study, we fo...