Jonathan Kemp; A naturalist in the south of France

    Two years ago the Aude vulture team was given permission to capture and equip ten adult Griffon vultures with geolocation transmitters ( balise ), the idea being to give information as to how far they were coming from nesting or roosting sites in order to take advantage of our feeding stations. Most large birds are equipped with these sort of devices when chicks ( poussin ) in the nest ( site de nidification ), when they can be handled more easily, but this particular study was aimed at adult birds, bringing new challenges.Even though not very aggressive, they are big wild birds and do not like to handled. The beak can inflict a nasty bite. A suitable cage was constructed, which could be rapidly shut when sufficient numbers of birds were inside. Only one person was in the near vicinity for fear of alerting the vultures and ravens that something was planned, and he/she crouched in a hide ( affut ) ready to release the net that would fall to trap the birds. Every week t...

  As I started out a couple of days ago to go and check on the progress  of an Egyptian vulture ( Vautour percnoptère ) nesting site, just five minutes up the road I came across a massive fly over  of maybe 100 G riffon vultures ( Vautour fauve ), circling and drifting with very little effort in the bright sun of late afternoon. If you live or visit the mountainous or hilly half of southern France, looking sky wards you will have noticed these enormous birds, often in groups or training across the sky following one another. Outside of migration periods, they are the only raptor that will be seen in large numbers together. There are four Old World vulture species in Europe; the others are the Black vulture( Vautour Moine )and Bearded vulture ( Gypaète barbu ). The history of the vulture re-colonisation in France is a success story. The stronghold of vultures in Europe is Spain, where the population thrived as a result of the intensive pig rearing,  which led...