Mortality continues among juvenile Egyptian vultures...

18.10.2013

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• Mortality continues among juvenile Egyptian vultures...

It certainly hasn't been a good year for our juvenile Egyptian vultures! Out of 10 we tagged in Greece, Bulgaria, FYROM and Albania, five drowned while trying to cross the Mediterranean and reach the northern coast of Africa, while another one was predated in FYROM before even starting migration.

Now another bird, Ilina, also coming from FYROM has found also a tragic death in a small island in the South Dodecanese. What in other occasions is considered to be an idyllic islet in the oneiric Aegean sea, this time it turned out to be a death trap for Ilina. After losing her way in Turkey, she made a desperate turn towards the Dodecanese islands reaching all the way south down to Rhodes. However from there, probably bad weather conditions made her turn north once more where she finally got trapped on a small islet. Bad weather conditions at sea prevented HOS field researchers reaching the islet sooner. By the time the weather had improved, the project team was able to find only a large pile of Ilina's feathers. A possible explanation is that an exhausted Ilina, after several days without food or water was attacked by the islet's resident pair of Bonelli's eagle. It is ironic that Ilina's brother, Ilin, also died predated by another raptor, in this case an Eagle owl.

Natural juvenile mortality in Egyptian vultures is known to be high, with estimations of 1 juvenile individual out of 7 actually reaching adult age. The problem comes when acute human-originated threats add on to this natural mortality. A healthy and stable population is "prepared" to suffer such natural casualties without these implying a severe threat to the survival of the species. However, the dramatically low population numbers in the Balkans caused by human pressure and activities have turned juvenile mortality into an important threat due to extremely low recruitment rates among the breeding population.  

 

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