African Raptors

Raptor research in the Ebo forest took an important step forward in 2011 on receiving funding from The Peregrine Fund, as well as the Raptor Research Foundation’s Leslie Brown Memorial Award and the British Ecological Society’s Small Ecological Project Grant scheme.  These funds are being used to survey hunter’s camps in the Ebo forest, searching for [...]

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Mellone, U., Yáñez, B., Limiñana, R., Muñoz, A.R., Pavón, D., González, J.M., Urios, V. & Ferrer, M. 2011 Summer staging areas of non-breeding Short-toed Snake Eagles. Bird Study DOI:10.1080/00063657.2011.598914 The importance of the non-breeding fraction of raptor populations for conservation is well recognized, but little is known on the behaviour of these “ghost” birds, especially in migratory species. [...]

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Katiti in Creole, crashed to approximately eight individuals since the 1940s before the population recovered, apparently unassisted, a genetics study published in the October 2009 Biological Conservation Journal has revealed. This crash, it is thought, approached the severity of the genetic bottleneck of the Mauritius Kestrel whose numbers reduced to only four known individuals in [...]

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A survey of Ethiopian vultures, which lasted for eleven days, was carried out from 28th January to 7th February 2010. The area covered encompassed a maximum radius of 200 km around the Capital, Addis Ababa. Road counts were used to count flying as well as perched vultures. Roost counts were performed only if they were [...]

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Introduction The Bearded Vulture is listed as endangered in the Southern African Red Data Book due to its small and declining population size, restricted range, range contraction, and the susceptibility to several threats in Lesotho and South Africa (BirdLife, 2004).  Its red data status and the lack of data on current population size lead to [...]

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We examined the connection between  landscape characteristics and behaviour of a long-distance migratory raptor, the Eleonora’s falcon. Our main goal was to test whether long-distance migratory birds adjust their migration programme according to the different characteristics of the habitats crossed during the journey with special emphasis in the so-called ‘‘ecological barriers’’, inhospitable environments where the opportunities to fulfil energy requirements are low [...]

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Reports of vulture declines have been numerous over the past decade.  From southeast Asia to West Africa, vultures are declining at alarming rates, making them the most threatened functional group of birds.  Due to their huge ranges, even relatively pristine areas in Kenya have seen large declines in vulture numbers. Scavengers, especially vultures, provide one [...]

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The African Fish Eagles at Lake Naivasha have been studied for over 40 years, firstly by the late Leslie Brown, and more recently, by raptor biologists from The Peregrine Fund, Cambridge University, The University of Leicester and The Earthwatch Programme. I first joined this research programme for my Masters Degree dissertation six months ago and [...]

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  Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world and 250 km east of Africa, has 23 species of raptors of which 17 and 6 are diurnal and nocturnal species, respectively. Of these 23 species, 13 are endemic to the island. Since the installation of The Peregrine Fund’s Madagascar Project in 1990, two endangered species [...]

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  (Part I) Kenya to Botswana   We left Nairobi on February 15th and after spending a few days in the Masai Mara, we drove into Tanzania where we found large herds of wildebeests calving in the southern part of the Serengeti. With them, we found large numbers of vultures feeding on the calves that [...]

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