The Long-Legged Buzzard (Buteo rufinus, Accipitriformes, Accipitridae) Nesting in Artificial Forest Belts and Single Trees in the Clay Semidesert of the Trans-Volga Region

The results of long-term monitoring of the long-legged buzzard, which nests in artificial tree–shrub communities of the clay semidesert of the Trans-Volga region, are presented. Observations, which started in the 1980s and were carried out in the Pallas district of the Volgograd oblast (Russia) and in the West Kazakhstan oblast (Republic of Kazakhstan), show that the lack of natural objects suitable for nest building made this bird dependent on human activity. The forest belts created in the 1950s–1970s dramatically expanded the potential nesting area of the long-legged buzzard and brought it out of local habitats like lake basins and spiraea gullies into the zonal plain. Here, around transportation routes and in the environs of settlements in the areas especially strongly developed by man, first a stable and then an oversized population of this bird was formed by the beginning of the 21st century. Since the 2010s there has been a decrease in the numbers of nesting birds, the reason for which being a drop in the numbers of ground-squirrels and the development of a tall-grass cover, thus making it difficult for birds to find prey. The degradation of artificial plantations deprived of care still renders little effect on the numbers of nesting pairs. Birds stubbornly maintain the preferred distance between the nests of 1.5–2 km. A decrease in this distance is noted sporadically, indicating both a shortage of nesting places and a high food capacity of the territory.