I had an amazing experience in the week. It was around 8.30am, in what was, a beautiful clear morning; the full moon was still visible and the sun was rising, projecting a fantastic violet coloured tinge to the Grazelama mountain range. This in itself was pretty spectacular!
I was walking our two dogs, Nuri and Luna, down the track that runs along side the Arriadh Hotel, when suddenly from nowhere this Griffon Vulture swooped low over our heads and landed in the field directly behind us. To my amazement it had joined another vulture that had already landed in the field. I couldn’t see any prey or carcass nearby, so I’ve no idea why they had chosen that particular place to land.
I quickly put the dogs on their leads and double backed through the olive grove. I managed to get within 25-30 metres of them before they were aware of our presence and flew away. Apparently these birds have a wing span of 3 metres, so it was quite sight to see them effortlessly glide to the other side of the valley in less than a minute!
I had no perception of the size of these vultures when I had previously seen them flying over the house; they are huge! These two must have been over a metre tall!! We have a large colony of Griffon Vultures nearby in the Grazelama Natural Park, so they are regular visitors to our valley.
I was walking our two dogs, Nuri and Luna, down the track that runs along side the Arriadh Hotel, when suddenly from nowhere this Griffon Vulture swooped low over our heads and landed in the field directly behind us. To my amazement it had joined another vulture that had already landed in the field. I couldn’t see any prey or carcass nearby, so I’ve no idea why they had chosen that particular place to land.
I quickly put the dogs on their leads and double backed through the olive grove. I managed to get within 25-30 metres of them before they were aware of our presence and flew away. Apparently these birds have a wing span of 3 metres, so it was quite sight to see them effortlessly glide to the other side of the valley in less than a minute!
I had no perception of the size of these vultures when I had previously seen them flying over the house; they are huge! These two must have been over a metre tall!! We have a large colony of Griffon Vultures nearby in the Grazelama Natural Park, so they are regular visitors to our valley.
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