Rehabilitated Lappet-faced vulture released.

 

A Lappet-faced vulture that was found unwilling to fly in June 2022. It was captured, treated and released ©ESO, IAR.

On 18 June 2022, an adult Lappet-faced vulture was found ill and unable/unwilling to fly.  It was amongst a mixed group of other Lappet-faced and Egyptian vultures at a water trough near the Wadi Sareen Reserve. With the help of the Environment Authority rangers at the reserve, the bird was taken into captivity and kept at the Environment Authority’s Biodiversity Centre in Barka.  Its health was monitored, and it appeared to recuperate to the point that we released it back into the wild on 30 June, having fit it with a GPS tracking device.  

During the first days and weeks after release we were a bit concerned because the vulture did not move very much.  We even considered taking it back into captivity.  Happily, since those early days it has been wandering ever more widely.  Maps below.

Movements of a rehabilitated Lappet-faced vulture (ID=171381) during the first week after release on June 30, 2022. ©ESO, IAR.

Movements of a rehabilitated Lappet-faced vulture (ID=171381) during 30 June - 22 September 2022. ©ESO, IAR.

Besides the happy outcome, this story also highlights other things… First, it reminds us that we don’t understand well the threats facing vultures, and how to address them.  The bird in this case may have been poisoned.  If that is true we have no idea about the type of poison or how the vulture came to consume it.  Second, at times injured and sick wildlife are found by the public.  It is important that the safety of both the animal and the helping human are kept in mind.  If you find an injured or sick vulture or other raptor, try contacting the Environment Society of Oman or the Environment Authority.  You can also leave a message on the blog, and with luck we’ll see it soon and get back to you, with some advice. 

You can read more about the work we are doing on Lappet-faced vultures by visiting ESO's Facebook page (here).  And here is a video about the work 

Lappet-faced vulture nestling found dead on the nest.

Lappet-faced vulture nestling before (note the shiny, open eye) and after (desiccated eye and dried body parts) its death from an unknown cause. ©ESO, IAR.

As mentioned in a previous blog (here), one of the nestling Lappet-faced vultures we fitted with a tracking device died on the nest.  

The way that transpired was: we (Environment Society of Oman vulture study workers and Environment Authority staff) visited the nest, and fitted the chick with a tracking device on 11 May.  All was fine.  We set up a trail camera to monitor the nest. The tracking device provides not only location data, but also information on acceleration in three dimensions, so by monitoring that we can determine when the device is no longer moving.  Of course, a non-moving device suggests that the bird might no longer be alive or the tag has fallen off.  

Twenty-three days after fitting the transmitter, the tracking data suggested that there might be something wrong, a team when out to the nest and found the chick dead.  The team collected the chick and took it to a vet for a necropsy.  Unfortunately, the extreme heat had caused the carcass to deteriorate, and the results of the necropsy were inconclusive.   We had also set up a trail camera at the nest, but it showed the adults (or at least one of them… we couldn’t tell because birds can’t be recognized as individuals… at least, not by us) visiting the nest regularly.  However, the camera memory filled and we had no images from the likely time of the death of the bird.

We really don’t know the cause of this bird’s death.  It could have been a natural event, but when we fitted the device, the bird seemed in good health (photo above).  It could have been that the parents brought in some food that was somehow contaminated, and that poisoned the nestling.  Although bird parents can abandon their chicks if disturbance is too great that does not seem to be the case here because the adults were photographed arriving at the nest after we fitted the tracking device.  It is also possible that one or both of the parents died for some reason (we know of Lappet-faced vultures being electrocuted nearby), and there was not sufficient food for the chick.  Like I said, we simply don’t know.  

Last year a similar mysterious death of a seemingly healthy Lappet-faced vulture nestling occurred in Dhofar.  Because that bird was not fitted with a tracking device, we only learned of its death after some weeks, and by then had no chance of guessing at the cause.  At least one goal of our work is to better understand what threats (e.g. disturbance, poisoning, and persecution) face Lappet-faced vultures in Oman, and work to lessen those threats.

Update on tracking of Lappet-faced vultures

 

Movements of a juvenile Lappet-faced vulture during 5 May - 19 June 2022. (Yellow = 5-19 May, Blue = 20 May-3 June, Red = 4-20 June) ©ESO, IAR.

In May 2022, we fit GPS-GSM tracking devices to four nestling Lappet-faced vultures in the Hajar Mountains.  Here and here are earlier blogs about that work.  The tracking is part of a larger study that has been funded by the Disney Conservation Fund and the Anglo OmaniSociety.  The tracking devices were provided by Hawk Watch International.  The Environment Authority of Oman provided field support and the permits to do the work.

First off, the bad news… A couple of weeks after tagging, the signal from the tracking device suggested that one of the birds we had tagged was no longer moving on the nest.  At that time it was too young to have fledged, so we visited the nest, and found that the nestling had died.  A future blog (here) will provide details, but the short story is that we do not know why it died, though camera trap images show it was being fed by the parents, and there was no evidence that the tracking device played any part in the bird's death.  Like I said... the long story will be posted in a later blog post, so come back later to read about it.

Now the (so far, very) good news…  The three remaining nestling Lappet-faced vultures that were fitted with tracking devices all fledged successfully, and since then have dispersed ever farther from their nest sites, although the nest sites seems to occasionally draw them back.  Below are maps of the three birds we have tracked during the period May – August.  At the moment we refer to these birds by their tracking device ID number.  It’s not very imaginative, and perhaps we’ll seek to name them.

Future blogs will update those data, so come back and see what has happened.  You can of course subscribe to the blog and get notifications about blog updates.  Also, please let you friends and networks know about the blog, and leave any comments you might have.

Movements of a juvenile Lappet-faced vulture (ID:171379) since fledging. ©ESO, IAR.

Movements of a juvenile Lappet-faced vulture (ID:190560) since fledging. ©ESO, IAR.

Movements of a juvenile Lappet-faced vulture (ID:191098) since fledging. ©ESO, IAR.