Since the beginning of the year, Assamo, the Egyptian vulture we have been tracking in the horn of Africa, has been mostly in northern Djibouti. Egyptian vultures have a global range that covers large areas of southern Eurasia, and parts of Africa. The Eurasian population migrates to southern areas including Africa and it seems that non-adults spend much or all of their time in these southern areas before attempting to breed. When we caught Assamo in March 2013 he (or she) was in adult plumage and so we did not know whether he was a resident African Egyptian vulture or a Eurasian bird that would migrate. Over the past year Assamo has moved around Djibouti and eastern Ethiopia. We have yet to see any concrete hint that Assamo will breed this year because he has spent most of his time near towns that have no obvious nesting cliffs nearby. Also, he has not started to migrate… yet. However, he did move to a location on the coast from where Egyptian vultures embark toward Yemen (though he then retreated), and Egyptian migration is on-going and so he might make the jump in the coming weeks. Below is a recent map of Assamo’s movements and you can see more detail if you visit our other blog: http://egyptianvulturedjibouti.blogspot.co.at/
Assam’s movements during 1-11 March 2014.
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