In Bulgaria the birds were accommodated at the Wildlife Rescue Centre at Green Balkans in stara Zagora, where they will stay for a month of quarantine.
All vultures are very young, one-year-old, collected from different rescue centres in Madrid, Valencia and Cataluna. Among them is a youngster of only several months. The bird was separated from the others to make sure it feeds well but it will then be put together with the rest of the vultures. Vultures are social birds and feel unwell isolated, even though quarrels and noisy arguments are a part of their daily routine!
The experts of the Rescue centre will follow closely the acclimatization of the Spanish birds and will later mark them with individual yellow PVC rings and wing-tags in order to ease their identification into the wild. At the end of July the vultures will be distributed among the four adaptation aviaries of the Vultures Return in Bulgaria project, located in Vrachanski Balkan, Central Balkan, above Sliven and Kotel. Here, birds will be kept some additional months in order to embrace the mountains as their own home. This autumn or next spring, the new Spanish vultures will be released into Bulgarian skies.
We are grateful to our colleagues from GREFA as well as the entire team which welcomed the weird batch Sunday evening.
For more information, please contact:
Elena Kmetova
Project coordinator
Phone: + 359 885 219 557; ekmetova@greenbalkans.org
