First Griffon vulture marked in the wild in Mallorca!

The GEDAi helped the marking of the first Griffon vulture in the wild. It was a young bird taken from its nest just before fledgling (weighting ~7kg!). The Griffon Vulture arrived in Mallorca island in 2008  as a consequence of a huge storm. Since 2012 it breeds in the island.The bird has been equipped with a GMS/GPS radio, sponsored by the Vulture Conservation Fundation, under the supervision of Dra A. Cortés-Avizanda.  Keep posted to see how and where it flies.

More here

Storm Petrels on the news !

The work by A Sanz-Aguilar and A. Rotger on the first tracks of Storm Petrels breeding in the Balearic Archipelago hit the news! here

 

Storm Petrel 2nd Campaign

The second Storm Petrel campaign in the Balearic archipelago has began. Birds are breeding late this year and expecially in this colony. Keep posted to know the foraging tracks!

New publication on Vultures and lead!

Arrondo, E., [..], Cortés-Avizanda, A., [...], Donázar, J.A. 2020. Dust and bullets: Stable isotopes and GPS tracking disentangle lead sources for a large avian scavenger. Enviornmental Pollution, in press https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.115022

Abstract: Lead intoxication is an important threat to human health and a large number of wildlife species. Animals are exposed to several sources of lead highlighting hunting ammunition and lead that is bioavailable in topsoil. Disentangling the role of each in lead exposure is an important conservation issue, particularly for species potentially affected by lead poisoning, such as vultures. The identification of lead sources in vultures and other species has been classically addressed by means of stable-isotope comparisons, but the extremely varied isotope signatures found in ammunition hinders this identification when it overlaps with topsoil signatures.

In addition, assumptions related to the exposure of individual vultures to lead sources have been made without knowledge of the actual feeding grounds exploited by the birds. Here, we combine lead concentration analysis in blood, novel stable isotope approaches to assign the origin of the lead and GPS tracking data to investigate the main foraging grounds of two Iberian griffon vulture populations (N = 58) whose foraging ranges differ in terms of topsoil lead concentration and intensity of big game hunting activity. We found that the lead signature in vultures was closer to topsoil than to ammunition, but this similarity decreased significantly in the area with higher big game hunting activity. In addition, attending to the individual home ranges of the tracked birds, models accounting for the intensity of hunting activity better explained the higher blood lead concentration in vultures than topsoil exposure. In spite of that, our finding also show that lead exposure from topsoil is more important than previously thought

Storm Petrel campaign 2020 just began

The Storm-Petrel campaign is on the starting blocks. The first visit to the colony in the Balearic Islands has been success despite the rough sea conditions and ... a lack of oxigen.

The Shearwater campaign 2020 on the starting blocks

The Shearwater campaign is on the starting blocks. With no boats, the water appears even more spectacular than usual.
 

We are anxious to assess the 2020 nest occupation rate after some bad news on the state of the species in Northern Africa.

Keep in touch.