In the bearded vulture captive breeding network chicks often need to be adopted by foster parents – this is because bearded vultures only raise one chick, so often the second egg is incubated artificially and the chick given to a different pair for raising. This year this happened with three chicks coming from Czech zoos (Chomutov, Ostrava and Liberec), which were adopted by pairs in the Vienna Zoo (Schönbrunn) and in the Richard Faust bearded vulture captive breeding center. We have reported earlier about these adoptions (see news item below). Now in this new film you can see how the chicks are developing.
Blood samples from all these chicks have now been taken for sexing, and very soon we will be deciding on where they will go – for release in to the Alps/Grands Causses/Andalucia, or kept in the breeding network.
The VCF would like to thank Enrico Gombala, who has been documenting these steps, as well as the management and staff of the different Zoos (Chomutov, Ostrava, Liberec, Schönbrunn-Vienna), for their commitment to the bearded vulture project.
