SANS FRONTIÈRES:
a project about migration for Vienna and St.Petersburg

by ROBERT ADRIAN X und EVA WOHLGEMUTH
(with Martin Leitner und Martin Rössler)


SANS FRONTIÈRES is about the traditional migration each autumn of more than 250,000 Rooks (Corvus Frugilegus Frugilegus) from Russia and Eastern Europe to Vienna and other parts of Central and Western Europe. The sight and sound of vast squadrons of up to several thousand birds flying in waves over the city as they return to their roosting places on a grey winter evening is an unforgettable part of the of the winter city-scape in Vienna and other cities of Central Europe. The Rooks remain until late February when, as the days become longer, they begin to drift away eastwards to their summer breeding grounds.

Rooks prefer to roost and breed close to towns and villages where food is easy to find, but their habit of living in huge noisy, messy colonies (rookeries) makes them undesirable neighbours. So, although some small colonies of local rooks are tolerated in Austria, the huge swarms of winter migrants return to the more open spaces of the east in Russia and the Ukraine where they are welcomed as harbingers of spring. By the end of March the rooks are gone.

The project observes the Rooks in winter in Vienna, their daily commuting into and out of the city, their feeding habits and social behaviour. The project material consists of over 8 hours of video and sound recordings of Rooks, collected during the winter of 2003, in and around Vienna. The birds have been recorded in their overnight roosts as they awaken and prepare to fly into the city, during the day while feeding in the parks and public spaces, in the afternoon as they gather in ever larger groups preparing to fly back to their roosts and their homeward flight - the flocks numbering thousands of birds swirling above the city.