What has Doda done?

 Below is a map of the movements of Doda (217) since it was fitted with a tag earlier this year.  You can see that it has made regular trips to Tadjoura, but that its home range was about 25 km NE of there.

Movements of Doda during 2020.

If we zoom into the northern part of that home range, we can see that there appear to be two (east and west) clusters of locations.  These clusters are seperated by about 4-5 km.

Clusters of activity for Doda.

If we zoom in further into parts of the western cluster we can see where they are spending a good proportion of their time - around human settlements.  Egyptian vultures are often commensal with humans, benefitting from the waste from humans and their domestic stock.  Humans benefit from the removal of waste that could promote disease.

Doda's locations near human settlements.

Other news is that we have launced a new blog about eagles we are tracking from Kuwait  https://kuwaiteagles.blogspot.com/ We'll be posting on that blog often as we try to catch up with the backlog of information on that project.  We hope you will visit (and re-visit) it

 

End of summer 2020

We haven't posted much about the Egyptian vultures we are tracking in Djibouti lately.  There are a number of reasons for this.  First, the birds fitted with GSM tags (Mabla (216), Goda (217), Doda (218) and Loyada (219) are moving in and out of the GSM network, so we can have gaps.  We then wait, and wait, hoping they will turn up.  We last heard Mabla on 20 July, Goda on 22 July, Doda on 16 August, and Loyada on 22 August.  On those respective dates, all seemed to be doing fine. Below is a map of last locations of those birds, as of 26 August.

Last locations of Mabla (red), Goda (green), Doda (blue) and Loyada (yellow). 

The second reason for not posting is that most of the birds appear to have held territories over the summer, and so did not make big movements.  Although their movements are interesting to us, they are quite repititious, and may not be interesting to everyone.  Below is a map of a vulture being tracked using the Argos system of satellites. These have the advantage of being able to upload data from anywhere, and are not dependent on the GSM network.  This map covers the entire tracking period.  The bird mostly stayed near its apparent territory, but made excursions out to Tadjoure, and one long excursion (for some unknown reason) to Eritrea on 3 May.

Really big news about Somali Sengis

We see that we have not posted much about the vultures recently.  In the coming days we'll catch up, but for now, we wanted to share this really big news from Djibouti and the Horn of Africa.  The Somali Sengis (elephant shrew, Elephantulus revoilii) has been rediscoverd, and Djibouti Nature's Houssein Rayaleh was part of the team that did that.  Have a look at the article https://peerj.com/articles/9652/  

Here are some of the news accounts:

https://www.globalwildlife.org/blog/seeking-the-somali-sengi

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53820395  

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/18/tiny-elephant-shrew-species-missing-for-50-years-rediscovered  

https://www.wionews.com/world/long-lost-elephant-shrew-found-in-horn-of-africa-321492 

https://www.barrons.com/news/long-lost-elephant-shrew-found-in-horn-of-africa-01597745110?tesla=y 

 https://twitter.com/search?q=Elephant+Shrew&ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Esearch

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/long-lost-elephant-shrew-found-in-horn-of-africa-1.5068543?cache=yes%3Fautoplay%3Dtrue 

https://www.rfi.fr/en/wires/20200818-long-lost-elephant-shrew-found-horn-africa

More about Mabla (216)

by H. Rayaleh and M. McGrady

As noted in an early post, Mabla (logger Id=216) appears to be a floating Egyptian vulture, and does not have a fixed territory.  Recently it has settled into the area around Hayu, Ethiopia.  It appears that Hayu is a small collection of buildings that service people and businesses moving between Ethiopia and Djibouti.  These places seem to be good for scavengers like Egyptian vultures.  Back in 2013, the vulture we were tracking (Assamo) spent time at a similar road side settlement near Ali Sabieh https://egyptianvulturedjibouti.blogspot.com/2013/06/

Movements by Mabla during 15 -20 May 2020.

Mabla's movements near Hayu, Ethiopia in May 2020.

Tale of two vultures

by H. Rayaleh and M. McGrady

We are continuing to hear from the Egyptian vultures we tagged in Djibouti earlier this year.  As with the adult Egyptian vultures we tagged in Oman http://egyptianvultureoman.blogspot.com/, most of them appear to be territorial birds that move regularly between their territory and the abattoir at Tadjoure, where we caught them.  The territories are in cliff-rich terrain where they are probably nesting, at least some of them.  A few seem to be either unattached to a territory or less territorial because they may not be breeding this year.  Below are examples of a territorial bird (217, purple) and one that seems to be a "floating" bird (216, red).  Interestingly, the floating bird visited Ethiopia, returned to Djibouti (near Tadjoura), then headed again to Ethiopia and back to Tadjoura.  During that second Ethiopian sojourn it flew farther south, and was not so far from Adigala.  Look back at the maps of "Assamo" the Egyptian vulture we followed in 2013.
 https://egyptianvulturedjibouti.blogspot.com/2013/08/adigala.html .  Assamo, also spent a lot of time in Adigala.  I wonder what is so attractive there.

Movements of two adult Egyptian vultures during February - April 2020.  The red dots (216) are from a bird that apparently does not hold a territory, and wonders widely.  The purple dots (217) are from a bird that apparently holds a territory and regularly visits Tadjoure, Djibouti to feed.

Territory holders vs floaters

by H. Rayaleh and M. McGrady

In our previous post we showed maps of four territorial birds, and an apparently non-territorial bird.  The map below illustrates again how the behaviour of territorial birds differs from that of an apparently non-territorial "floating" bird.  At this time of year, territorial breeding vultures will be defending their territories against intruders, conducting courtship and producing eggs and young.  Of course, they still have to feed.  Floating birds don't have the burden (or benefit) of holding a territory, so they wander.  Those wanderings may include dwelling in some places for some limited amount of time, but they really are not tied to any locations.

Movements of three adult Egyptian Vultures during February and March 2020.  Blue and Green are territorial birds that occassionally travel to Tadjoura, presumably to feed.  Yellow is a wandering bird, with no fixed abode.

They seem to be resident

by H. Rayaleh and M. McGrady

So far, it seems that the birds we marked in Tadjoure in March are all resident birds; they were all adults.  Below is a map of some of the birds we are tracking.  If you double click on the map you should be able to see a full screen view. The map illustrates that some are probably territory holders (blue, green, red), and may be breeding now (its spring and love is in the air), and at least one is seemingly unattached to a territory, and wandering more widely.  The territory holder are occassionally visiting Tadjoure, presumably to feed at the abattoir there, from time to time.

Please, everyone stay healthy.

Movements of Egyptian vultures during March 2020.

New tracking initiative starting in 2020

by M. McGrady and H. Rayaleh

Mabla (216) being released by Houssein

This blog post marks the re-activation of  the Egyptian vultures in Djibouti blog, after a pause of over a year.  During 10-22 February 2020 we did field work in Djibouti on Egyptian vultures that followed up on our work in 2013.  In 2013, we fitted a single sub-adult Egyptian vulture (Assamo) with a GPS-PTT (satellite transmitter), and tracked it for about 18 months.  During that time, it moved between two centres of activity, one north of Tajoura, Djibouti and one near Adigala, Ethiopia.  We never got to the bottom of why that bird made such long journeys between those centres, but we did write a paper that used those data and data from Oman http://egyptianvultureoman.blogspot.com/ to examine the movements of non-breeding Egyptian vultures.  You can download that paper from the 24 Jan 2014 blog post https://egyptianvulturedjibouti.blogspot.com/2019/01/new-publication-using-data-from-assamo.html.

Anyway… during our 2020 field work we fitted 7 adult Egyptian vultures with satellite transmitters. In the coming weeks/months/years we will be posting updates about these birds every so often.  So as to get started, below is a map of the movements of Mabla (pictured above) since it was tagged on 16 February.  Unlike the others that we tagged, Mabla does not appear to be a territory holder, but has wandered over to near Semera, Ethiopia.  

Please follow this blog to keep up to date, and let others know about it.  We'll be posting more soon.

Movements of Mabla, an adult Egyptian vulture during 16 February - 8 March 2020