Breeding Season Recap 2022
Looking back at the 2022 breeding season gives us an opportunity to both celebrate our successes and also learn where we can improve. Overall, the season was successful with the hatching and subsequent fledging of four chicks – one bearded vulture, one hooded vulture and two Egyptian vultures.
An Egyptian vulture chick
Whilst these are achievements to be celebrated, it also highlights the need for some changes to increase our future success. The majority of our hooded vultures are housed in a large colony aviary and consistently hatch one or two chicks in a season. However, as a critically endangered species our aim here at the trust is to increase that number if we can. For our 2023 season we have been able to refurbish some of the nest ledges and make them more appealing to potential pairs. We’ve also made sure we increase provision of nesting material to encourage the unpaired birds to pair bond over nest building.
Our pair of bearded vultures at the Horstmann Trust have been established for many years and succeed in hatching a chick most years. The 2022 season gave us two fertile eggs, but also some challenges. One of the eggs sadly did not hatch and the with the second egg, the chick had become malpositioned in the shell in the run up to hatching. A malposition can be fatal and required careful monitoring and assistance in the final stages of incubation to ensure survival. The chick was fully upside down in the shell, meaning it wasn’t going to have the space to move around in order to hatch itself. With help from our dedicated team and checking throughout the night, we are able to help break the shell away at the crucial moment. At five days old the healthy chick was placed back in the nest with the parents to be reared by them, successfully fledging around 20 weeks later.
The Egyptian vulture eggs proved to be a little easier and hatched out in the incubators all by themselves. This is our favourite kind of hatching(!) although they are always carefully monitored in the final stages, just in case.
Looking forward to the 2023 season we have been able to identify some small improvements we can make along the way which will hopefully give us the boost we are looking for.
