How the time flies. It has now been three and a half weeks since Toni Wegscheider and his employees dragged Wally and Bavaria up to the release niche under the Knittelhorn. At that time, the two female Bearded Vultures were still two shy, fluffy fluffy birds with a bit of fluff. That is over, the two have developed very well in the release niche, they are bursting with strength and a desire to explore. Wally and Bavaria just can’t fly yet. “But if everything continues as well as before, then they could possibly take off for the first time next weekend,” says Wegscheider. “Then both of them will have reached the age for it.” The first goal of the Bearded Vulture Project of the State Association for Bird Protection (LBV) is within reach: Bearded vultures will soon be circling again in the sky over the Berchtesgaden Alps.
Young bearded vultures make their first flight around 120 days old. Wally is 113 days old this Monday, Bavaria 115. “So there is not much time left,” says Wegscheider. “Especially since they both practice a lot.” To practice means: you flap your wings to strengthen and train your chest muscles, over and over again, sometimes several hundred times a day. “At first the whole thing was a wild and rather random flutter, with pretty random hops,” reports Wegscheider. “In the meantime, Wally and Bavaria are jumping around very purposefully in the niche and can manage up to 20 powerful wing beats per series.” But the two of them still have to train a lot for the next few days. “Because only when they can manage around 200 wing beats a day in a stable manner will they have the stamina for their first flight,” says Wegscheider. The biologist has already accompanied a number of bearded vultures reintroductions into the Alps.
With a wingspan of 2.90 meters, the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) is one of the most powerful birds of prey in the world and has been at home in the entire Alpine region for centuries. But the birds of prey were hunted so mercilessly that they were extinct at the beginning of the 20th century. The reason was the popular belief that bearded vultures hunt sheep and even young children. In doing so, they do harm to other animals and certainly not to children. Because bearded vultures are scavengers. In the 1980s they began to be resettled in the Alps – first in the Hohe Tauern, later on the Ortler and the Mont-Blanc area. The bearded vulture population is currently around 300 specimens across the Alps. The new reintroduction project in Berchtesgaden, which is supported by the LBV, is intended to close the gap to the Balkans. The Southgerman newspaper accompanies the action.
There is great interest in the project. The LBV has installed two webcams in the release niche. Bird fans can keep track of what is happening on the Internet (www.lbv.de/bartgeier-webcam) follow live. “The webcams are a huge success,” says Wegscheider. “We have days with more than 10,000 hits.” In addition, a fan base has formed on the Internet that follows every movement up on the Knittelhorn from morning to night. And with the beginning of the holiday season, the rush to the information stand on a wide path at the level of the Halsalm increases. From here, hikers with spotting scopes and binoculars can look directly into the release niche, which is only 800 meters away as the crow flies.
There Wally and Bavaria not only practice diligently for their first flight. They eat a lot and have gained significantly. When they were released into the wild, each female weighed a good five kilos. Wally was a little lighter than Bavaria. “In the meantime, it should be one to one and a half kilos more for both of them,” says Wegscheider, “after all, every 500 grams of meat and bones consumed a day, that’s more than an adult bearded vulture.” The birds of prey are scavengers, they feed mainly on the bones of chamois and other wild animals that are killed in mudslides, rockfalls or in winter when avalanches. “Wally already manages to swallow bones 15 to 20 centimeters long in one piece,” reports Wegscheider. “Bavaria, on the other hand, prefers to eat large chunks of meat.”
Meat and bones are still delivered free to the female birds of prey. Wegscheider hauls up to seven kilograms of frozen skulls, forelegs and other unusable parts of chamois up to the release niche every four days. The animals were shot during regular hunt in the national park in winter. Employees have frozen the parts that would otherwise have had to be disposed of as hunting waste in portions for the bearded vultures. Caring for Wally and Bavaria is an arduous drudgery. Wegscheider has to climb an extreme steep slope 300 meters up to the release niche. There is a risk of falling on the route. In addition, boulders and stones keep falling from the walls of the Knittelhorn.
Wally flapping his wings. Only when young bearded vultures can safely beat their wings 200 times a day are they ready for their maiden flight. Screenshot: LBV Bearded Vulture webcam
Wally and Bavaria have also gained another ten centimeters wingspan, they are now about the size of the adult bearded vultures. But not only that. “Their chocolate-brown cover feathers are more voluminous than the adult animals,” says Wegscheider. “That is why their wing area is comparatively large. This means that they are not so streamlined at first, but they sail more safely through the air and can try out all possible wing positions in peace.” And they can make better use of the thermals on the mountain. “You have to imagine it like the training wheels on a children’s bike,” says Wegscheid, “it’s like flying with support springs.”
And what does the maiden flight of a bearded vulture look like? “Everything is possible there,” says Wegscheider. “There are some who are unexpectedly hit by an updraft, do a couple of somersaults in the air and land on the ground 200 meters further on, bewildered.” Wegscheider has also seen young bearded vultures “who have mastered the right moment to take off, then immediately made the right steering movements and after 500 meters have touched down as skillfully as if they had done it umpteen times”. Whatever the case, the biologist will from now on deposit chunks of meat and bones around the rock niche – so that Wally and Bavaria have something to eat even if they don’t find their way back into them after their maiden flight.