by M. McGrady and H. Rayaleh
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| 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.
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| Movements of Mabla, an adult Egyptian vulture during 16 February - 8 March 2020 |
