Simon Thomsett

Category: Raptor Expedition, lammergeyer, vultures | Date: Jan 27 2009 | By: simonthomsett

In late 2001, I abseiled down a cliff into a gorge just north east of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. The edge was covered in thick vegetation and was full of shards of frost that snowed down on my neck as I gingerly let go of my right hand and dropped down only some 50 feet into a deep cave. There was a good few hundred more feet to go, and this explained my caution and fear.

Inside the cave were two very young Bearded Vulture chicks. One was much smaller than the other and aged about three days. The other was about seven days old. I took the elder. In the wild, only one chick survives and so Cain and Abel rescue is the norm in raptor management. It augments the natural reproduction by 100 percent if done cautiously. I was at that time working for the Peregrine Fund, National Museums of Kenya, KWS and the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Organisation in a project to re-introduce Bearded Vultures (Lammergeyers to some) to Kenya.

I called her ‘Mutt’ after the Amharic explosive exclamation. “Mutt!” is a bit like “What!”

I cannot now remember if it was with her or with another that I was thrown off a Kenya Airways plane in Addis. I had prepared the endless CITES forms, permits, health permits and clearances. Obviously the tiny chick is incapable of being taken down in the hold, as it needed 24-hour care, and its body temperature is entirely dependent on being held close to ones tummy for the duration of the flight. All this had been organized ahead. Yet one of the cabin crew noticed, moved swiftly up the aisle and came back straight away with two stewards and I was escorted outside. The chick had been traumatized enough for the last five hours and its life was hanging in the balance. I gave the stewards the papers to forward to the captain (I had already done it once). But I could see the Captain ignoring me as I sat on the tarmac. Finally I phoned my colleagues in EWCO. They immediately phoned the Foreign Office in Kenya. They phoned back to Kenya Airways, and the Captain was suddenly a different man. Onboard I was ushered and home we went, to be met at Nairobi by Paula Kahumbu’s car.

Mutt and five other Bearded Vultures were taken in this way. It was a good time. For the first time in two decades we had Bearded Vultures flying over Hell’s Gate National Park in Kenya. Then we had a few problems, including one being deliberately killed. Mutt used to venture right into this hostile territory and I was advised to take her back into captivity. Two others were left wild as they did not enter that area.

Mutt the Bearded Vulture

I then put her in a huge shed at Game Ranching in Athi, and over the following five years tried to find her a mate within Kenya. I did find one pair and missed three opportunities to rescue Abel as I was unable to get official assistance in the field. This was the local requirement and easily resolved, but for bureaucracy. I began to regret having taken her back for she sat most of these years alone, but for a few where she lived with an Augur Buzzard and once a Rüppell’s Vulture. The captive breeding of Bearded Vultures is a simple thing, but without clear permission and encouragement it was not going anywhere. With the closure of my collection of raptors and house, Mutt remained the most important of all, and the one that held back our expedition plans and the final closure of my house.

I had released Duchess, a captive bred Crowned Eagle, at Ol Donyo Laro two years ago. The release went well and she is still alive and wild. The location is without doubt the best possible choice in Kenya for the release of Bearded Vultures, given the now enormous human population around Hell’s Gate (the original release site) and the proliferation of very hazardous electrical pylons and geothermal generation in the immediate vicinity. Other locations that once held this rare raptor such as Mt. Kenya, Mt. Elgon, Cheranganis, the Ndutus, Mt. Kulal and Sololo are either heavily influenced by humans, regularly poisoned or simply logistically impossible to release.

Mark Jenkins at Ol Donyo Laro stepped in to help. He has taken on the task of managing the wildlife and habitat of the area and has a personal interest in assisting one of Kenya’s most endangered animals. He phoned on Wednesday, January 20th to ask if we could be ready to move her the next day. On the day, Laila and I gathered up Mutt and drove her into town and got on a plane to Ol Donyo Laro. Mark had built a fine pen for her. She will remain in this new pen for a while, adapting her internal map of the area and getting used to the local scene. She will then be moved to the very highest peak overlooking known Bearded Vulture habitat in Kenya and across into Tanzania. From there we hope to release her, preferably with a PTT (satellite transmitter tag) or one of the new cellular phone GPS transmitters. I costs a small fortune, but possibly no other single animal is as valuable as she. With some luck, she will make her home here in one of the wildest and best quality locations in our region. It will be the end of a long story, and perhaps the beginning of a new and more vigorous campaign to re-instate Bearded Vultures in Kenya.

Mutt on her way to the airport

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Tags: lammergeyers, mutt the bearded vulture, vulture finds new home

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Category: Raptor Expedition, vultures | Date: Jan 23 2009 | By: Laila Bahaa-el-din

We had about a week before the Bearded Vulture’s new home would be ready so we decided to take off for the Mara. We had several species that we aimed to photograph and we were also interested in seeing how many vultures were around during this time of year. All the wildebeest are in the Serengeti now so it is down-time for the vultures in the Mara. We hoped to at least catch a few and tag them as part of the ongoing project with the Peregrine Fund and National Museums of Kenya.

We arrived in the Mara to find it very quiet. We drove for a whole day seeing very little in the way of raptors or other animals. We saw a Dark Chanting Goshawk which we managed to bait, catch, ring and photograph. That was one of the key species we needed in the Mara so we were pleased. We moved on to the main Mara River crossing and found where all the wildlife was. Thousands of zebras were there as well as all the cats.

Dark Chanting Goshawk

We found two lions on a zebra kill out on the open plains and stayed with them, hoping that they would eat and move to find the shade. Our plan didn’t quite work as the lions came to lie under our car, using the car as shade. The vultures know better than to approach the kill while the lions are still around (in fact, one cheeky Hooded Vulture approached and one of the lionesses was quick to jump up and the vulture backed off). We ended up spending the whole day with the lions but didn’t catch any vultures.

Lions in our shade

We spent the next few days around that busy area and came across countless lions, cheetahs and a leopard. There weren’t any dead animals around so our best bet was to stick with the cats and hope that they killed something. On our second morning, we found the remains of a Thomson’s Gazelle. There really wasn’t very much meat left on it, and what little was there was being eaten by jackals. There was a White-headed Vulture standing on the outskirts which was another of our key species for the Mara trip.

White-headed Vulture

We had to get back to Nairobi for a friend’s photo exhibition so we set off after four days in the Mara. Just as we got through the gate, we got a phone call saying that cheetahs had killed an impala but it was too late for us to go back. But we do plan to return for another attempt soon. We had spent some time catching vultures in the Mara last year during the wildebeest migration and the sky was full of vultures so it was interesting to see the contrast now that everything is so quiet.

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Tags: dark chanting goshawk, lions with a kill, mara expedition, white-headed vulture

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Category: Raptor Expedition, Rosy and Girl in Naivasha | Date: Jan 11 2009 | By: Laila Bahaa-el-din

After all the setbacks, we were keen to get on the road as soon as I got back to Kenya on December 30th. We set off for Nakuru, a small National Park on a brackish soda lake full of flamingos and pelicans. We had received a tip that it had lots of migrant Steppe Eagles and Steppe Buzzards as well as the rarer Spotted Eagles. Simon had been working on the car over the Christmas break, and we packed it up and hit the road.

It was my first time in Nakuru and I was immediately impressed with the beauty of the area and the amount of wildlife. We got into the park in the early evening and had to rush to our campsite but saw a Spotted Hyena, the much rarer Striped Hyena and rhinos as well as thousands of buffalos on the way.

The three days we spent in Nakuru were very productive. We saw lots of Steppe Eagles, Steppe Buzzards and Montagu’s Harriers as well as a few Lesser Kestrels. We found the most productive area for raptors to be on the outskirts of the park on the sewage treatment plant. There resided cormorants in large numbers alongside Marabou Storks and here we saw the largest numbers of Eurasian Marsh Harriers, Fish Eagles and European Black Kites. We didn’t turn our heads away from the lions we saw walking along the lake shore, or the two leopards we saw sitting in trees.

Eurasian Marsh Harrier

We dropped off to see Sarah Higgins and Rosy and Girl in Naivasha on the way back. Rosy is back in the big shed with Girl. He can see a little out of his right eye but nothing out of his left eye. His immune system seems to be rejecting the lenses and building up fibrin. But he still seems as tough as ever and calls out territorially.

We spent a night in Hell’s gate and sat atop a cliff in the morning waiting for the cliff-nesting Ruppell’s Vutlures to start flying below us. We spent three hours photographing and watching the vultures as they set off for the day. We were giving a presentation that afternoon so we sat alone at a designated picnic spot, working on the computer. Simon suddenly shouted, and I turned to see a huge male baboon sitting on the wall behind me. Simon ran at it with his arms waving and shouting. This baboon was not one bit intimidated and jumped straight into the car, turning the place upside down before Simon managed to scare him off. He didn’t go far though, just a few feet away where he drank from a tap that required him to press a button and dip his head under the tap to drink at the same time. Impressed, we decided to move on before his buddies joined him.

Ruppell’s Vulture

Simon gave his presentation that afternoon and we returned to Nairobi where we are now, sorting a couple of things, before setting off again tomorrow. It’s good to be on the road and busy. The birds of prey have not let us down. In fact, we have been luckier than expected with a second sighting of the Greater Spotted Eagle in Nakuru. Our piece of good news is that we have heard from Ole Donyo Laro who are almost ready to take the Bearded Vulture which will completely free us to start moving through the continent on this expedition.

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Tags: baboons in cars, Eurasian Marsh Harrier, Nakuru expedition, Ruppell's Vulture

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