We have recently written about the first ever cinereous vulture which was tagged in Jordan – we now a nice video done by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature in Jordan about this (see above).
Cinereous vultures are scarce winter visitors or passage migrants in the middle east. This bird was founded stranded and weakened in Jordan. Thanks to the efforts of the RSCN, this bird could be rehabilitated back to the wild, and re-released back to nature, equipped with a GPS tag provided by the VCF, with generous funding from a MAVA project on vulture monitoring across the Mediterranean.
The bird was released in the Dana Biosphere Reserve, and after spending 1 week in the area, it moved swiftly south, and flew about 300 Kms in 6 days. It entered Saudi Arabia and settled close to Tabuk – a town in North-western Saudi Arabia. Since the end of November, this juvenile bird commutes between a mountain ridge and the plains where there are some intensive agricultural lots.
The GPS tag is providing us valuable data on the foraging habits of this species in this area of the middle east, and is helping us identify key habitats and locations for vultures there. Should something happen to this or any other tagged vulture, it will also allow us to identify the precise causes of death, and thus act immediately and mitigate them for the future. This is also important to help direct resources and identify priorities for the implementation of the vulture Multi-species Action Plan, a global vulture conservation plan in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East co-coordinated by the VCF.
You can see the movements of this bird and of other tagged vultures here>>
