UKC

https://www.birdguides.com/articles/tracking-down-the-peak-district-lammerg...

Apparently a bearded vulture has been spotted recently in the peak. I hope it steers clear of some of the grouse estates.

wow!

Presumably you're worried for the poor bird's safety - I certainly don't want this magnificent bird gunned down by a bunch of hooray henry toffs!

FTFY

Damn right, but I was thinking more of the danger of poisoning.

Non- native species, my friend. Could be considered fair game........

The vulture was reported over Coventry, heading for Leicester a few days ago.    Possibly acting on information received I thought.

It'll be interesting to see where it ends up for best feeding opportunities. A recently bolted limestone quarry?

That's very socially irresponsible of it

Presumably you're ok with it being gunned down by someone else shooting  ?

Saw a pair in Val d'Isere years ago, they are huge.

We have been circled by four Bearded Vultures above Sion, saw quite a few near Grossglockner in Austria. Best, however, was the one passing just a couple meters below me while sport climbing in Crete. They are amazing, same wing span as Griffon Vultures but much more elegant, like a huge raven.

CB

Non-native but not unnatural. It’s believed to be the off spring of a reintroduced pair in the Alps that’s been exploring via Belgium and the Netherlands. Clearly prefers the grit to Chamonix! 

Interestingly it was spotted down Cressbrook. If there's Ravens at Ravensdale then there's already a buttress down that way with its name on.

I admit to being a bit flippant but neither are grey squirrels or mink unnatural. 

I see them occasionally higher up our valley  & they nest in the adjacent valley (French Alps), a magnificent sight. My best view was in the Pyrenees several years ago when I was walking along a terrace between two bands of cliff. The bird passed by just below & some 10m away. Needless to say I didn't have a camera

We get them around here from time to time, although more commonly (i.e. most days) it's the smaller, griffon vultures we see from the house circling over the craggy hillside, usually in 2s or 3s but occasionally up to 10 at a time. Lately though there's been a golden eagle that has been cruising overhead quite often - a majestic sight!

But they were introduced by human hand, was the point I was getting at. Whereas this is natural spread of its range. Much like the cattle egret which I think is increasingly making its home on our shores.

Being as their wingspan is about 3m, 10m away is pretty damn close, like "why's the sky gone dark" close.

Exactly. In Austria, a couple of birds came from behind us, swooping low across the hillside. The first thing we realized was the shadow passing over us, like a cloud on a sunny day!

CB

Managed to make my sister (the real birdwatcher in the family) very jealous by phoning her to say that we were watching a group of griffon vultures from the kitchen window. Yet to add bearded vulture to the 'seen from home' list although that does include golden & short toed eagles.

I think living on an island might have something to do with that, one being capable of flight and the other two not.

The dislike is mine, pure, unadulterated jealousy!

CB

Yikes - I forgot about that! You reminded me that some of the more adverse types of "land management" involve predator control (which hardly ever works anyway) by poisoning.

I'm assuming that you mean a conservation officer with a tranquilliser dart.

Anyone know roughly where this bird is at the moment? My son is into birds of prey and when I told him about this his jaw dropped.....was thinking of trying to spot it this Friday.

Margery Hill this morning. Roosting around Abbey Brook. If you're a twitter user lots of up to date information. There are about 50 people up there today. 

Don't use twitter but thanks for the info.

Does it move around a lot i.e. if I go to Margery Hill on Friday is there a good chance it'll have buggered off somewhere else by then?

Couldn't say. I'm following it on social media and not been up there. It's been there a while though so it seems settled. 

https://www.sbsg.org/sightings/recent-news

This is useful and some of the twitter links might work even if you don't subscribe to it.

Thanks

I imagine that if it's anywhere still around there will remain a huge associated throng of twitchers latched onto it somewhere in the vicinity. That's a great pic on the twitter link of them taken through a big telephoto from Stanage. Very jealous; hope you see it.

Might go and have a gander myself. Ideally you need to be into some kind of "twitcher" notification system (I'm not) which will be frequently updated with latest sightings for a bird of this significance. Twitter may suffice.

It's on the move - south. Cheshire/Congleton. 

Maybe just wandering around scoping places out. Thing is it can cover vast distances quickly if it wants to; across the Peak district in around 30 minutes I would reckon - unlike us it can do straight lines.

It's back on Howden Moor according to the SBSG site....

From dawn till dusk a vulture can not fly in straight lines - it's speed depends on good flying conditions. Vultures are too heavily built to flap their wings for more than seconds, they must climb circling in thermals. On the wrong day they can be 'grounded' - ie. obliged to hang out in a tree.

i'm amazed this bird has got so far already - and fear for it's safe return to a mountainous region. A lowland tree is not a good launching point for thermal access - and Britain can have summer days with low inversion cloud. It's outlook is compounded by the twitching brigade - if disturbed it could lose energy attempting to flap - hopefully they are all being sensible ?!

In addition it also has to land in order to feed - but it's kill would normally be on a mountain side with good launch. The smaller egyptian vulture is significantly more capable of getting up from a flat kill. 

Is bearded vulture as "restrained" flight wise as more normal bare necked vultures? (I know those can gorge themselves on carcasses until they're too heavy to fly.)

I seems that the wanderlust is a juvenile thing. Read recently about the isle of wight juvenile sea eagles turning up all over the place.

Hopefully it knows how to get back to its home mountains and will piss off once it's determined that there's no long term future for it in the UK (post Brexit 😁).

I mean in order to relocate the bird humanely to the Alps or Pyrenees.

If the bird hangs around much longer I suspect that's the only way it's going to get home.

How would it even know which direction the alps are? 

I was with a french climbing friend today - fairly knowledgeable on vultures - says their range in one day is 40km. That I cannot confirm, but looking at the distrib maps - nearest 'home' is alps or pyrenees; it's seeming very unlikely that it strayed so far northwards autonomously  - even given a brisk S wind and high cloudbase.

So who and with what motive would someone have released a captive bird in territory so alien ??!

It didn't come straight from the Alps/Pyrenees, is wild not captive and had previously spent some time in Belgium - see https://markavery.info/2020/07/13/tim-melling-that-lammergeier/

This might be a daft question but why is it flying so far? What's it doing?

very interesting ! but that provokes deeper speculation; the hop to the channel islands is nothing but the channel there is 3x wider than Calais-Dover. from the aeronautic perspective getting enough height to cross the channel is remarkable - remembering that there are no thermals over water - and it must do it on a glide ! 

The channel is 36km at Calais Dover and approx 108km at Cherbourg.

How about 170km in thee hours?

https://www.4vultures.org/extraordinary-flight-of-griffon-vulture-kvarner/

Chris

Good map memory - hopefully

Thanks for posting this - great story! The young and inexperienced vulture was 1st rescued after a fall into water - then made his comeback with this record breaking flight - incl 80km over water ! he must have had a good tailwind.

I hope the news on our UK vagrant continues to reassure us of safe adventure. 

Latest birdguides news adds confusion to the story - see comments below article !

Who / which is Pierro - said to be GPS tagged ???

https://www.birdguides.com/news/origin-of-wandering-bearded-vulture-reveale...

This earlier article has good pictures showing the distinctive damaged tail of the UK visitor

https://www.birdguides.com/articles/rare-birds/rarity-finders-bearded-vultu...

I think Pierro was a different/earlier wandering youf.

The damaged tail - there are photos from earlier this year from the continent that show the same bird with complete tail - small identifying features in the feathers allow a +ve id match. I thought first of all that maybe the tail was due to moulting but I think this bird's a bit too young for that.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/17/bearded-vulture-makes-r...

I read that it has also been spotted driving off a couple of ravens which were feeding on a dead sheep and was seen to swallow the already picked clean bones whole!  So it can obviously feed and take off well enough. 

Stomach dissolves the bones because ph is apparantly 1! That's concentrated hydrochloric acid levels.

It was here first https://guernseypress.com/news/2020/05/29/bearded-vulture-spotted-in-channe...

Interestingly it's still got all its tail feathers in those photos - wonder what happened.