Vulture casting an epic shadow
NO SOONER than the sightings of a mythical albatross on the wing are reported come tales of a more spectacular bird casting awesome shadows over the land.
Luck was very much part of the discovery of the black-browed albatross that put in a cameo appearance at the RSPB’S Bempton Cliffs reserve earlier this month.
Those gifted with views of a wayward lammergeier – one of Europe’s largest birds of prey with a spectacular eight-foot wingspan – had to be fit rather than fortunate, completing treks worthy of the SAS to ensure a date with destiny.
Social media has been full of stories all week about intrepid souls completing marathon yomps across some of the Peak District’s most fabulous and rugged landscapes to reach the remote spot where the lammergeier has made its summer camp.the bird’s own journey has been equally epic, venturing from France, over the Low Countries and eventually across the North Sea to South Yorkshire.
Accounts from the rock face have been describing the adventures as some of the most arduous yet memorable days’ birding ever “enjoyed” in the UK.
“A bird not to be missed,” said one observer. “I have been birding since I was a child but this experience was one of the best ever in the UK,” said another.
Like albatrosses, the lammergeier is a bird with a fabled aura that has an assortment of names to honour its immense power, strange plumage and unusual behaviour.
While some authorities use the bizarre lammergeier – German for lamb vulture – others opt for the anglicised bearded vulture to denote its shaggy facial plumage. One of the vulture’s more historic names is the ossifrage – Latin for “bone-breaker” – which alludes to its habit of scavenging for dead mountain animals and then dropping their remains from great heights onto rocks to get at the nutritious marrow.
Although Howden Moor in South Yorkshire hardly compares with the lammergeier’s usual range among the remote crags and high peaks of the Pyrenees and Alps, the romantic landscape has been providing an atmospheric setting for most of the UK’S dedicated twitchers to put in hours of searching.
For some, it meant setting off long before sunrise so they could have a far greater chance of seeing the bird at roost on a rock face before it launched itself into the skies for day-time sorties over a vast area of upland, making it far more elusive to those desperate for a sighting.yet in the competitive world of building twitchers’ checklists, the discovery of only the second “wild” lammergeier on British soil does not bring immediate rewards.
Indeed, purists who adhere to the official British List, as maintained by the British Ornithologists’ Union, are unlikely to count the South Yorkshire bird as it is believed to have been raised by parents released into the wild as a part of a conservation project in the Alps.
The only other lammergeier to have been seen in Britain turned up four years ago, spending part of the summer on Dartmoor. It was eventually placed under Section E of the British List categorised for species recorded as “introductions, human-assisted transportees or escapees from captivity, whose breeding populations, if any, are thought not to be self-sustaining”.
‘A bird not to be missed’