Assamo: 19 - 28 April 2013

Nothing much to report.  Assamo keeps moving around north of the town of Tadjoura, where we caught her/him.  He seems to keep his distance. Locations are 15 - 60 km distant from the town.  Tadjoura has a daily abbatoir, which attracts vultures.  When we were there we saw 20 - 60 vultures of various ages.  It seems curious that Assamo has not returned to the site, despite it having a predictable and plentiful source of food.  It seems almost certain that Assamo is not a breeding bird.  At least not in this year.

In past blog posts I have mentioned how most of these locations are near small settlements (use the kml, available in the last post to see for yourself).  Just remember that the Google Earth satellite imagery is from 2006, so just because we don't see a settlement on Google Earth, does not mean there is not one today.

Assamo's movements during 19 -28 April 2013 (double click on map to enlarge in a new window).

Assamo kml

For those of you with Google Earth I have posted a kml here of Assamo's movements during 5-14 April 2013. With this you can better see what Assamo has been doing.  When you open the kml it should give you a view similar to the one below. You can zoom into locations and see that some of them are very close to human habitation or roads.  Some of the locations near roads may also be when Assamo is perching on a power pole, which could be an electrocution hazard for him/her.  So far so good, but Assamo lives in a hazardous environment... Although Djibouti does not seem to be as hazardous as other places.  More on that in a later post.  You will also see that many of the locations are at the same place, meaning Assamo spends a lot of time just standing around.

For those of you no used to Google Earth, if you put your cursor on a location and left click, then properties will be shown of that location, including date, time and other information.

Map of locations in downloadable kml

Assamo on the move again: 5-18 April 2013

Assamo's move back to northern Djibouti

Well, I guess I will have to make more frequent postings because if I leave it too long then it is a bit time consuming to create maps of Assamo's movements... He's just moving so much.  So, excuse me for not tidying up the map above.  Here is what Assamo has been up to:

5-13 April Assamo was mostly in any around the town of Ali Sabieh in southern Djibouti, just north of the Ethiopian border.

14 April he was in the town of Ali Adde in the morning, then near the road going into Ethiopia, close to the border.

15 April he made a quick trip into Ethiopia on the road north of Denele, but then by later that day he was a couple of km south of Arta (in the map above, this is the small cluster of locations just south of the Gulf of Tadjoura.  He stayed there for the whole of the 16th and 17th, mostly near the road.

18 April at 0715 in the morning he was already north of the Gulf of Tajoura, and by 1015 he had covered the 60 km or so to a location about 32 km NE of Tadjoura town and NW of Obok.

I don't know about you, but I find this fascinating!
 

Poisoning of Egyptian vultures in Greece

Two Egyptian vultures were poisoned in northern Greece recently (first week of April).  Pictures and a text in Greek can be found on the website of the Hellenic Ornithological Society and on the Return of the Neophron website.  In short... these birds were found because one of the vultures had been fitted with a satellite radio transmitter (like Assamo).  Its name was "Lazaros".  Lazaros was first poisoned in 2012 in Greece, but was rehabilitated, fitted with a transmitter and released.  It migrated south and spent this past winter in Chad (also a place where we know vultures are persecuted and killed).  This spring it was migrating back to its summering area in Greece when it was poisoned again. 

Illegal poisoning of scavenging is a problem in many parts of the world.  In this case it is likely that poisoned baits had been set for other predators, most likely mammals like foxes or dogs.  The Egyptian vultures then fed on the bait and died.  At the bait that first poisoned Lazaros was found a poisoned dog, and two weeks earlier in the same area two foxes were found poisoned.

Assamo's movements 27 March - 5 April 2013

Assamo makes a move south

Between 27 March and 3 April Assamo behaved very much as he/she has done since capture, moving from place to place, mostly to the north of Tadjoura.  On 1 April it moved to its closest location to Ras Siyyan (so far) and the Bab el Mandeb Straits.  On 3 April it broke from its previous behavior and headed to the south of Djibouti and Ethiopia, traveling over land and not flying over the Gulf of Tadjoura.  During one leg of this journey Assamo was moving an average of about 16 km/hr.  On the 3rd and 4th of April Assamo was in Ethiopia near Dewele, and on 4-5 moved back into Djibouti.  The last location on 5 April had Assamo in the town of Ali Sabieh..  I have posted something a bit different on the Vulture Chronicles blog, so have a look there, too.  It seems like Assamo is really not a migrant...this year at least.