A Griffon Vulture from Central Balkan made an accidental landing at… Constanca, Romania

On May 26th the Green Balkans team was contacted from Romania by local people who had trapped one of our vultures, walking in the area of Cherna Voda, close to Constanta, Romania. As you probably know, all of the wing-tags we use to mark our birds, carry our contact numbers so if someone finds a bird, they can contact the team of Green Balkans. The bird seemed fine, yet refused to fly. Our team reacted immediately and headed to Romania, in order to collect the vulture. At 4,30 in the morning, the Wildlife Rescue Centre accepted the vulture in distress in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria.

K4L is a two-year old male, which arrived from France in 2012. In August the bird was released from the adaptation aviary in Central Balkan and stayed in the area until October. After that, following some visiting vultures, K4L discovered the other supplementary feeding site, maintained by Green Balkans in the Sinite kamani Nature Park, some 100 km to the East of the original release site. Here the vulture stayed in a group of some 20-23 birds, released from Sliven, Kotel, Central Balkan and even some guests from Vrachanski Balkan, Serbia, Eastern Rhodopes. We last saw K4L on May 20th.

The bird is currently at the Rescue Centre in Stara Zagora, and we are still awaiting the results of the laboratory, yet the clinical examinations showed no fractures or open wounds and the bird already stands on his feet and feeds on his own. K4L will stay under close surveillance and will then be returned to his friends in the adaptation aviaries in the Balkan Mountains.

For more information, please contact:
Elena Kmetova
Project coordinator
Phone: + 359 885 219 557; ekmetova@greenbalkans.org