The 2011 breeding season, the second one since the first Black Vulture pair of the Pyrenees Reintroduction Project bred successfully on 2010, has finished recently.
The beginning of 2011 could not be better, with 4 pairs laying eggs in Boumort Reserve, between 22th February and 9th March. Two of them did not have chicks and stopped incubation after 86 and 74 days. The last 2 pairs saw how their chicks hatched but one of them lost it with one week old and the last one, formed by the experienced pair of 2010 (Perla & Portell), with 55 days old. We don’t know yet the reason, but at least the last one (Bruna & Corneli) could be caused by a Golden Eagle attack.
Black Vulture colonies have low productivity when forming, due to the lack of experience of the breeding birds. We hope 2012 to be the year when the first Pyrenean colony after more than 100 years and formed by 5 pairs, begin to grow up with force.
After the successful breeding season of 2010, when the first pair of Black Vulture raised a chick for the first time in the Pyrenees since more than a century (Gala), this year two more pairs have joined Perla & Portell. Hopefully a fourth pair, will probably do the same soon.
Last June, for the second time in few weeks, an inmature Spanish Imperial Eagle Aquila adalberti was observed in the area where the Black Vulture Reintroduction Project in Catalonia is based (Boumort-Alinyà). Few days ago, another (or maybe the same bird) has been located in Navarra region, also in the Pyrenean area. These observations are not the first one for the area (even in Catalonia) but they coincide with a n increasing number of sightings and longer stays of Iberian Black Vultures in the area, some of them comming from Central Spain (at least 2 ringed birds from Madrid colonies).
The date of 16th July 2010 will be remembered as the day when the first chick of Black Vulture born in the Catalan Pyrenees (thanks to the reintroduction project) was ringed, after the species disappeared from the region a century ago.
Last June 2nd Inici was found dead inside a suplementary feeding point in Huesca. Inici, as its Catalan name means, was the first Black Vulture released in the project and the beginning of many people work with the aim to recover a recently extinct species in the Pyrenees.
