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Tobia, VCF ©Loredana Murabito

Update – Egyptian vultures Sara & Tobia reach African skies!

September 27, 2019
Categories
  • Egyptian Vulture
  • Italy
  • Netherlands
  • Tunisia
Tags
ItalyNetherlandsTunisia

Have you ever had to wait for a delayed flight? What’s the longest time you’ve waited? During her epic migration journey, the Egyptian vulture Sara had to spend an entire month in Sicily waiting for favourable winds to cross the Sicilian Strait. She did not embark on this adventure alone, however: her travel companion Tobia soared by her side in the skies of Trapani.

On September 7th, Sara finally flew away, heading for Cape Bon in Tunisia. Little did she know, her journey would face yet another twist: due to unfavourable winds, she ended up having to arrange a stopover on the volcanic island of Pantelleria. She arrived there well before sunset at 5 p.m., after having flown 130 km over the sea, at a speed of only 21 km/h. That’s still one half marathon per hour – not bad!

After a good night’s sleep, Sara left shortly after sunrise at 8 a.m. on the following day. Soaring another 82 km over the Mediterranean at an average speed of only 14 km/h, she landed in Cape Bon, a peninsula in north-eastern Tunisia, at 1.30 p.m.

For an Egyptian vulture, 14 km/h is remarkably slow: they usually make this journey at an average speed of 40 km/h. This very low speed is revealing: it shows that Sara had a particularly hard time completing her journey.

Sara’s travel companion, Tobia, was last spotted in Tunisia, but hasn’t been sending any signals since last week.

Nothing to worry about, though: this is normal, since his GPS uses telephone antennas, which are very rare in the area. We hope we’ll hear from him again soon, and that he is travelling safely to his wintering spot in Niger.

Sara (who has a different type of tracking device), has left Tunisia already, and has flown a daunting 740 km deep into the Sahara desert. It’s not even over: she still needs to fly another 1,500 km to reach her winter retreat in Niger. Where exactly are Sara and Tobia now?
Read the update by the Vulture Conservation Foundation, to find out.

The European population of Egyptian vultures has fallen by up to 50% in the last 50 years, and without your help, these magnificent birds will soon go extinct. Donate now

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Stichting BirdLife Europe and BirdLife International gratefully acknowledge financial support from the MAVA Foundation, the EU LIFE programme, the European Commission and Vogelbescherming Nederland (BirdLife Netherlands).
All content and opinions expressed on these pages are solely those of Stichting BirdLife Europe.
"Flight for Survival" is partially funded by the LIFE Against Bird Crime project. More information is available here.

Over 25 000 000 million birds are illegally killed around the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and the Caucasus every year. For non-rounded, mean numbers, and minimum/maximum estimates, see: Preliminary assessment of the scope and scale of illegal killing and taking of birds in the Mediterranean (Brochet et al 2016) and Illegal killing and taking of Birds in Europe outside the Mediterranean: assessing the scope and scale of a complex issue (Brochet et al., 2018)

“Flight for Survival” is a BirdLife International campaign managed by Stichting BirdLife Europe to raise awareness about the illegal killing of birds in Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, Lebanon, Bulgaria and Hungary, and their conservation activities to fight this.” The species storylines for this campaign are heavily inspired by the information available on the migration habits of the selected birds.

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