The first bearded vulture born among the crags of Spain’s Picos de Europa mountains in 75 years has left the watchful gaze of her parents and taken to the sky.
The chick, named Bienvenida (Welcome), was born in March to Deva, a 10-year-old female, and and Casanova, a 13-year-old male.
By the middle of the 20th century, the bearded vulture had been hunted to extinction in the Picos de Europa, which stretch across three regions of northern Spain. A joint project between the regional government of Aragón and the Foundation for the Conservation of the Bearded Vulture (FCQ), supported by the Spanish government, has been working to restore the species to one of its former habitats.
Although there are now 26 bearded vultures in the Picos de Europa – most of them reintroduced since 2010 – Bienvenida is the only such animal to be born in the wild there.
“After 140 days in her parents’ care, Bienvenida the chick has left the cave that housed her nest and begun to fly,” the FCQ said in a statement. “Thanks to some chick feather and skin found beneath the nest, FCQ experts and specialist vets have been able to use DNA analysis to establish that the bird is a female.”
The foundation added: “She has been named Bienvenida in reference to the social context into which she was born. The situation today when it comes to preserving and appreciating Spain’s biodiversity is far more favourable than it was in the mid-20th century, when this species became extinct after decades of persecution.”
In June, experts tried to carry out a check-up on the new arrival and to set up some satellite tracking equipment, but their efforts were apparently thwarted by “the chick’s very active behaviour”.
The bearded vultures of the Picos de Europa are now Spain’s third largest reproductive population of the birds, behind other groups in the Pyrenees and Andalucía.
The bird is known in Spanish as the quebrantahuesos, or bone-breaker, because of the way it drops bones from a great height so they shatter and yield their marrow.
In English, the bearded vulture is also known as the lammergeier – German for “lamb vulture” – because of the false old belief that they killed sheep and lambs.
