Keve András, Sági Károly Jenő: A Bakony természettudományi kutatásának eredményei 7. - Keszthely és környékének madárvilága (Veszprém, 1970)
The birds of Keszthely and its surroundings (Summary)
The birds of Keszthely and its surroundings Although Keszthely and its surroundings have rather a town and lowland character (agricultural areas, groves, etc.) they have been included in the BakonyInvestigation programme. However, due to the boundaries blurred allover, the area cannot be separated sharply from the Keszthely-Hills discussed already beforehand (KEVE in print), and data of the early literature referring to these areas in most of the cases cannot even be told from each other. This is the only reason why in this essay the literary data have been separated from the authors' own observations. Although the bird population of the Lake Balaton cannot be considered as a subject of the Bakony-Investigation, in several cases it was diffucult to deside —and this could happen to the damage of perfect consistency —which of these species should be mentioned, which should be discussed in the essay dealing with the Lake Balaton. The overlapping originates mainly from the fact that the water-birds do not sit continually on the water-surface for their resting or nurishments, they rather used to fly across their area or at least circle above it. The greatest difficulty in pointing out the bounderies is met in places where the shore has reedy stretches. Difficulties are met not only in pointing out the boundaries of the area of the investigation but the area itself has parts which, due to their woodland character, are in close connection with the Keszthely-Hills as regards bird population. Gardens, rows of trees etc. just give a stronger stress to this link. In this connection should be mentioned the parks of Keszthely, woods and the former elmwoods at Fenékpuszta whose bird population had been laid down by STEINFATT (1934) fortunately in time. The heart of the area is the city of Keszthely which has been expanding intensively during the last 10 years. This expansion has made itself felt on the Castlepark, too. The arrangement of the Helicon-Park also has resulted in several changes. By the eradication of a great deal of its coppices many singing-birds, first of all the nightingale stock, have been hard hit. On the other hand by the recent embankment around the pier the area has considerably been enlarged, giving new ground to coppices and growing trees which attract many birds. The second, perhaps most characteristic, part of the area is the grove whose great transformations and slow accretion have been discussed in full by SÁGI and his collaborators (1961, 1962, 1966, 1967). Sporadic data concerning this area date back to the early 18th century (BÉL). While the investigations of the authors were under way the "moorland farm" has been brought about in the grove, changing the marshland and turfaceous meadow-land of 15 years ago into an agricultural area with rows of trees. In another part of the grove poplars have been planted, its system of canalization has been extended and cleaned whereby —a lot of water having been drained off —the birds have been affected markedly. There have been left, however, smaller parts in the grove which have preserved the original state —at least insofar as this state can be called "original" when confronted with the state of centuries ago. These spots are meadow-lands with a fairly high water-level in springtime and with willow-bushes spread around. Now a few words about the shore. When KEVE started his investigations (1946) there were still many sandy parts between the reedy stretches. After 1960 only very few of them have been left. Most of them have got choked with mud as a result of the siltation of the Keszthely-Bay and the siltation has been followed by the formation of reedy stretches. By this change while the marsh-birds have been favoured, the birds of the shore have been deprived of their resting and nurishing places.
