Vultures: the house keepers of wild France.
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...