Vulture Feast

It's still chilly, at most a few degrees above freezing despite being in the second half of April. At just over two thousand meters altitude in the southern Pyrenees, the air only warms when the sun has been up for a few hours. A couple of Egyptian vultures have sailed by at a distance when suddenly a bearded vulture majestically glides over the valley below. It descends and lands gracefully on a rocky ledge. It almost looks like it's admiring the magnificent landscape. Another bearded vulture glides by and then descends for landing just behind the first bearded vulture's perch. A nesting site on the mountainside a bit further away must be the explanation.

There are 23 vulture species in the world. The four species that breed in Europe, in southern Europe to be precise, are bearded vulture, Egyptian vulture, griffon vulture and black vulture. We also find these species on other continents, although the bearded vultures in, for example, Ethiopia seem smaller than the bearded vultures that are resident in Spain. Perhaps the size difference is just a consequence of climate - in the Pyrenees as well as in the Alps and northern Greece, winters are colder than in Africa and animals tend to be larger where the climate is colder.

Vultures are primarily scavengers, although some people working on a vulture project in Spain told me there were a couple of Egyptian vulture individuals that had started killing animals. But then it was only sick and weak individuals or young animals. But generally, vultures keep nature clean. They reduce the spread of disease by eating all kinds of carcasses.

Worldwide, there are estimated to be fewer than five thousand griffon vultures, making the species one of the threatened vultures. The griffon vulture has been reintroduced to northern Spain in recent years, and now it can be spotted at one of the "vulture restaurants" that offer poison-free, veterinary-inspected food for threatened vulture species. This is something that has also benefited the griffon vulture and the severely threatened black vulture.

The griffon vulture is a tough bird that when it lands at the restaurants makes

even the countless Egyptian vultures become a bit cautious.

Eating carcasses is a dirty occupation. That's why most vulture species have more or less bare heads and necks. The bearded vulture differs in several ways from the other European vultures. To begin with, it's feathered on both neck and head, and it also has a small drooping mustache that hangs down from the beak.

But above all, it differs in terms of diet. The bearded vulture often comes to the "restaurants" when the other vultures have finished eating and the meat is gone. What remains are just the bone remnants, which are precisely the bearded vulture's specialty. It wants the nutritious bone marrow found inside the bones. To access the bone marrow, it has a special approach. If it doesn't swallow the bone parts whole - here one can rightly speak of "iron stomachs" - it can bang the bone pieces against stones or even more sophisticatedly: it takes the bone pieces up into the air and from 40-50 meters height then drops the bones so they shatter into small pieces against the rocks.

Many vultures breed colonially, but the bearded vulture is, just like the black vulture and griffon vulture, more solitary. A bearded vulture can glide up to seventy miles on a windy day. The bearded vulture pair's territory is extensive, and there's often at least a mile between nesting sites. The bearded vulture is not acutely threatened when looking at the whole world. In 2004, BirdLife International estimated the world population at between a couple of thousand and ten thousand birds.

But in Europe, the bearded vulture is one of the most threatened species after being quite common a couple of hundred years ago. When the EU banned farmers from leaving naturally deceased animals in nature a number of years ago, the vultures lost an important food source. The vulture restaurants became increasingly important.

Just like other vultures, both the black vulture and bearded vulture were severely affected by the veterinary use of diclofenac in India, where the use of this painkiller for livestock was banned twenty years ago. Now that local Spanish and Italian authorities have permitted diclofenac for use on livestock, the threat picture has become complicated regarding the already threatened bearded, black and griffon vultures in southern Europe.

In Sweden we have four lekking species: capercaillie, black grouse, great snipe and ruff. In southern Europe and especially in Spain we also find the little bustard, a species whose lekking sites are threatened. For many bird lovers, it has been a dream to photograph little bustard males, who make spectacular jumps during courtship. The lekking period is short, from early April and a week into May. And we travel here during the lekking period.

The little bustard male is significantly less shy during courtship than our capercaillie. Little bustard females are, however, even shyer than our capercaillie hens. So the actual mating occurs in the tall grass, well hidden from the curious.

The males' courtship display consists of flapping with the wings, followed by stamping on the ground that resembles a little flamenco dance which increases in tempo before the actual dance jump is performed.

When Brutus visited the fields outside Montgai in 2014, there was especially one little bustard male that differed from the other males on the open fields outside the village of Montgai in Catalonia in northeastern Spain. This male was at the display ground long before the sun rose, and long before the other males appeared. The wing flapping and stamping began in the night darkness when the only thing lighting up the fields was the occasional car headlights. He displayed until it was almost lunchtime. The other males rarely appeared before dawn.

Images except the hide image © Brutus Östling

Four hide days with photography of bearded vultures, griffon vultures, Egyptian vultures and black vultures, all European species.

Brutus has been down to the area around the Pyrenees a number of times since 2008. Photography takes place from hides with the best backgrounds and most reliable visits from the spectacular bearded vulture but also griffon vulture and black vulture.

The griffon vulture is being reintroduced in northern Spain, and one of the days we go to the hide with the most reliable visits from this tough bird.

The Egyptian vultures always come and they are many. The fights when the meat pieces are to be distributed provide lots of opportunities for action shots.

We photograph the little bustard from hides at the actual lek site. We go out before the first daylight.

The little bustard is the smallest of the bustards in the northern hemisphere, yet it's not a small bird, in length as large as a female pheasant.

It prefers to stay in undisturbed agricultural or meadow landscapes where the vegetation is high enough to provide protection during the display time.

In Spain, where the little bustard has its strongest foothold in Europe, the number of little bustard males is estimated to have decreased by 80-90 percent during the last thirty-year period. The population decline is largely due to

land areas that the species prefers (lands that perhaps were not considered usable) now being put to use for other purposes.