A Vulture Saved from the Sea...

...was the heading on the first of my daily emails from the Town Hall this morning. Viktor Ferrando, a local artist, was out with some friends in a boat off the coast of Calpe on Friday evening, when they came across a very large, exhausted bird floating in the sea. Because it seemed so weak, they decided to get it on board, and took it back to the local Club Nautico, who called the Calpe Animal Protection Unit. They recognised this metre high bird as a young Griffin Vulture and arranged its transfer to the Santa Faz Recuperation Unit in Alicante, where it was put on a drip to re-hydrate it. It is hoped that it will have recovered enough to be released again in a few days.

The Town Hall informs me that it is thought this vulture is one of this year's youngsters from the colony being reintroduced into Barranc del Sinc in the Sierra de Mariola who took advantage of a thermal when learning to fly and was dumped in the sea when the thermal petered out.

Precis from the Griffon link above.

There used to be a large population of vultures in Europe, because farmers were in the habit of leaving their dead sheep, goats and cows lying around for them to dispose of, but EU legislation put an end to that, and there was no longer the wild carrion to keep up the numbers. In some areas, local conservationists have erected muleros; platforms where the carcases of horses and donkeys are left for them to feed on, as these do not carry the same BSJ risk, and at the same time, they are trying to get the EU law amended to allow controlled use of other domestic carcases where they are trying to establish colonies.