The Vulture team prepares for next season.

 

 

The time of year, mid-autumn, is the time when the vulture team has to do some housekeeping. Not in our kitchens, but around the nest sites of the French vultures. We would, no doubt, all be divorced if we only cleaned our kitchens once a year.

The Egyptian vultures (Fr. Vautour Percnoptere) have all left on migration to Africa about mid-September, and there is a short window before the Bearded vultures (Fr. Gypatete barbu) start bonding back together. Even the Griffons (Vautour fauve) are beginning to show interest in nesting sites, even though they are not going to actually start mating and laying until early Springtime.  For the non-nesting (in the Aude) Black vulture (Vautour moine)there is work to be done – but I will come to that later.

So to start with the gypas, as we call them.  They will choose a territory, refurbish the nest, repeatedly mate and  then lay the egg. One year a pair laid an egg even in November, but that was unusually precocious. More often they start sitting in January. You might ask how it can be known that the egg has been laid; by careful watching and being familiar with body position and behaviour, someone practised can pin it down. There is also the fact that if all is well the egg will not be left unwarmed by a parent’s body for long.

Laurent about to inspect the Lammergeier nesting site

 

Thus I found myself in October guiding a climber, Laurent, – I could see the nest but to him it was invisible- towards a gypa cavity that was occupied at the beginning of the year, but abandoned with no hatch. The male bird, Corbières, easily recognisable by a permanent loss of primary flight feathers on his left wing, has been  present in the area for 6 years, and only recently has been joined by a female. We all thought that he deserved to be rewarded for his patience.

 

Bearded vulture Corbières, Bastien Brunon

 

When I was setting up below, Corbières flew across the valley , perched in a tree for 5 minutes, before circling gently upwards until  too high to follow, even with a telescope (at least, my neck couldn’t take much more vertical sky-gazing) – and I lost him.

This was  good, the birds need to be reassured that their chosen site is secure from both avian and human intrusion. At certain crucial times of the nesting timetable disturbance will lead them to abandon a site.

This year the egg was abandoned so soon we wanted to know why and laboratory analysis would show whether there was poisoning from lead deposit, or other factors. Sadly, when Laurent arrived and searched there no egg nor even fragments of shell. There was hardly any food left overs either, the ubiquitous ravens (fr. Grand Corbeau) having no doubt pillaged the site and cleared it all away. At least that made the visit less smelly for Laurent. There was an interesting pile of  Bearded vulture poo, coprolites, full of calcium phosphate from the bones they devour and which resemble pieces of chalk. There was also some sheep’s wool, which the vultures had gleaned to cradle their precious egg.

 

Bearded Vulture coprolite.

A member of the team, Matthieu, went to the nest site of a pair of percnos located in the same valley. A camera trap had been left in the cavity during the ringing of the chick, and he went down to retrieve it.

 

The idea had been to allow the ring on the parent’s leg to be read. Alas, just after the ringing the big clumsy chick had knocked it over, so it was pointing at the ground. The few shots that were taken gave some insight into how it spent its time between feeds; pecking around the rocky floor, and then being very noisy when the adults came to give it food. It was never possible to read the ring of the adult.

 

The chick with the ring we put on a day or so before

Next on the list was a visit to a fauve colony, where a rope had appeared.

Nobody knew who had put the rope there, or why. The Office Français de Biodiversité was contacted to request permission to remove the rope, and agreement was obtained. Two of us went at the end of the afternoon and after scrambling through the brush at the top of the cliff we found the rope, which, it turned out, was attached to another. Perhaps someone wanted to lower a camera into the colony; in any case it was cut clear and the hope is that this would dissuade whoever put it there that there was no future in the plan. Fortunately whilst we were there none of the resident vultures appeared.

 A similar operation was put into place for the largest fauve colony that is found in the Aude. A camera had been positioned (by us) and needed to be retrieved, and a climber was contacted. We also wanted to put up a fence to prevent the feral goats that live there jumping down on to the nesting ledge and trampling on the eggs or the vulnerable chicks. More scrambling through forest, slightly hazardous approach to the top of a cliff, and then Paul set to putting up the fence.  Job done, the circling vultures were left in peace.

 

Florian the climber ‘contemplating’ his climb.

As to the ‘moines’, there is a big project; which has been many years in the planning.

 The idea is to build an enclosure for a pair of zoo –recovered moines; create a nest for them and encourage nesting behaviour. They cannot fly and are sterile so will not escape, or produce a young.

All this will be visible from above, and the hope is that other passing moines, being colony nesters, will spot this and be attracted; there will be artificial nests constructed in the trees located nearby. It is a method that has worked in Spain..

 The work has started. Just as a teaser, some fancy footwork is needed to haul the materials necessary to the remote site. Anna looks delighted…..I remember going for donkey rides at Weston –Super-Mare and she probably felt the same with the mule in tow…..