During a press conference held at St James Cavalier today, the EU LIFE Yelkouan Shearwater Project presented the initial findings of the telemetry work that has been carried out over the last six months and revealed that to date, one of the Yelkouan Shearwater chicks which was fitted with a satellite tag has travelled as far as Greece and another to the coast of Egypt.

A team of BirdLife Malta and Heritage Malta scientists have been fitting electronic tags to Yelkouan Shearwaters from the Rdum tal-Madonna colony over the last few months. The project aims to find out which areas at sea around the Maltese islands are important for these seabirds and also to discover the location of their wintering grounds - all new information for the international scientific community.

Two young birds that hatched at Rdum tal Madonna this year were fitted with solar panel satellite tags just before they left their nests in late June. This is the first time in the world that this has ever been attempted with chicks of this species. A first message was received on the 2nd July from the satellites showing the location of the bird near the Maltese islands. The two tagged seabirds remained near Malta initially until on the 8th of July, they began moving towards Greece and Crete, then headed south towards North Africa.

Project Manager Helen Raine explained: "This is the first time that such extensive research on this species has been carried out anywhere in the world and it is really putting Malta on the map for seabird research within the scientific community. We are using the latest in seabird tracking technology." Ms. Raine continued: "All of this information will help us identify areas to manage as Marine Special Protection Areas, something Malta is required to do by the EU Birds Directive. Furthermore we hope to discover the location of the wintering grounds for these Maltese birds."

Ms. Raine explained that the LIFE Project team is using three different types of electronic devices to track the birds. "In addition to the satellite tags, five birds were tracked with GPS (Global Positioning System) data loggers. The initial results indicate that most birds headed about 200 km south-east of Malta to fish during the breeding season." Ms. Raine added.

A further twelve adult Yelkouan Shearwaters were also fitted with geolocator leg tags, very tiny devices which fit on the metal ring on the birds' legs. The birds have already left Malta and the project team intend to retrieve the devices when these shearwaters return to claim their nests in October this year.

John J. Borg from Heritage Malta, one of the project partners who spent numerous nights at the cliffs at Rdum tal-Madonna, said: "This research is seriously logistically challenging as the sites where birds breed are only accessible by abseiling. It has taken 59 nights on ledges and caves in the cliffs at the project site during this breeding season to gather these results. However this challenging work has started to bear fruit and we hope that by the end of the project in 2010, we will have substantial data about these birds and their breeding grounds in central Mediterranean."

Malta has around 10% of the world population of the Yelkouan Shearwaters and numbers of the species have been declining over the last 20 years. Therefore identifying important feeding and rafting grounds at sea is one way of making sure that the Maltese populations of Yelkouan Shearwaters are protected.

"More analysis and research is needed to fully understand the patterns of the birds' behaviour and relate this to important fishing and rafting areas for these seabirds. However, the project has made a huge leap forward in the understanding of Yelkouan Shearwaters, taking us closer to protecting these long ranging Maltese birds at sea" Helen Raine concluded.

Those interested to learn more about the project can visit the project website www.lifeshearwaterproject.org.mt and also book a free guided walk with the Project Site Warden at Rdum tal-Madonna by calling the BirdLife office.