HawkTalk Issue 95 Winter 2023

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HAWKTALK WINTER 2023 ISSUE 95

Third Critically Endangered chick fosters hope

In our summer edition of HawkTalk , we introduced you to two of the Critically Endangered chicks hatched here at the Trust in April. What we didn’t know at the time of writing, was that a third chick was ready to hatch! To tell this chick’s tale, we must first revisit Heshima and Ruaha – two of our African White-backed Vultures who became foster parents to our first chick of the season after some bad luck with their attempts at hatching their own eggs this year. They made the perfect candidates for foster parents, as they were already sitting on a dummy egg after their third egg laid in April was taken into the National Bird of Prey Hospital™ for monitoring by our Bird Team. The Bird Team expertly monitored this egg in our incubator, through a process called candling (where light is shone through the egg to view activity inside). Initially, it looked likely that this egg was infertile and would not hatch. However, this changed as the chick grew inside the egg, and in early May our third chick of the year successfully hatched! Now we were faced with a new challenge: which vultures would raise this new chick, with its original parents already foster-rearing the other African White-backed Vulture chick? At the same time, our Cinereous Vulture pair, Thor and Aldara, were sitting on a dummy egg after their egg sadly proved infertile. This gave our team an idea that had never been done before: could this pair from another species foster the chick?

Catch up on the exciting tale of all three Critically Endangered chicks that have hatched at the Trust this year It has been an incredible sight to see Thor and Aldara raise this chick, who has now begun to wander around their aviary on its own. Now nearly fully grown, it still looks like a very small vulture compared to the impressive stature of its foster parents! Make sure you take the time to come and see this chick now it has moved into our vulture aviary at the bottom of our grounds. With full support from the EEP (EAZA Ex-situ) Breeding Programme coordinators for both species, once the chick reached ten days old, Bird Team member Simon Christer carefully placed the chick in a reveal egg (a half-opened egg to simulate hatching) and nestled it into Thor and Aldara’s nest platform in place of the dummy egg they had been sitting on. The team watched on CCTV cameras as the pair inspected the chick, tiny in comparison to the Cinereous Vultures. They quickly took to the little bird and began to feed and care for it as if it were their own.

Thank you to Investec for funding our new incubator!