Last time (in July) we gave you news of Tizón – the young Egyptian vulture tagged in September 2014 in Spain – he was in Mauritania, in the same wider region where he spent most of his time since he crossed the Sahara Desert in October 2014. He has moved now a bit south and is back to westernmost Mali (see the map).
Tizón- a young Egyptian vulture born in Iberia in 2014 – was found disoriented and suffering malnutrition in Extremadura more than one year ago, and after a short period of rehabilitation was released on the 24th September 2014 in the Sierra de Hornachos with a tag, set up by the Junta de Extremadura (the regional government), AMUS (a local nature conservation NGO) and the VCF.
Tizón quickly migrated through Morocco and crossed the desert through Mauritania but then spent a few weeks in October last year on the Mauritania-Mali border. He then embarked on a long trip, first going south (almost reaching Bamako, Mali´s capital), then flying East into Burkina Faso, before returning west to the Mali-Mauritania border, continuing all the way west into Senegal, before making a U-turn back to western Mali in January this year, where he has spent several months.
Juvenile Egyptian vultures often stay one or two years in Africa before their first migration back north.
Stay tuned for more developments…