Noticias en ‘Aragon’
May 6th, 2008
It is increasingly difficult for shepherds to make a living these days, and without them the landscape and biodiversity they help to produce would be seriously affected. Ways must be found to increase the earnings of shepherds and to compensate them for the work they do. In Catalonia for instance there is a pilot scheme which pays shepherds to graze forests thus cutting down the undergrowth and reducing the risk of fire. They are also employed to detect and warn about fires.
Another way forward is the great initiative by a group of Aragonese shepherds in the Medinaceli and Calatayud area. Ser Pastor por un Día, offers you the chance to go out for a morning or afternoon with a shepherd and a biologist and learn about the different skills involved in shepherding, mastiff dogs, local sheep breeds, shearing, lambing and the landscape they help to create. Knowledge of some Spanish is probably a must. Tel: 659 834 121 or visit Ser Pastor por un Día. I intend to sign up one of these days.
Aragon, Farming, Livestock, Rural Spain, Rural tourism | Tags: sheep, shepherd tourism, shepherds|
Vulture feeding stations in the Sierra de Guara
Interesting article here from birdguide.com about Vulture feeding stations in the Sierra de Guara.
“The authorities have set up a number of feeding stations where carcases are provided especially for vultures. As a result, numbers of vultures, particularly Griffons, have increased rather than declined and birders are provided with wonderful viewing opportunities. In addition to substantial numbers of Griffon Vultures, it is possible to see Lammergeiers and, in summer, Egyptian Vultures at these sites….The biggest and most spectacular feeding site is at Alquezar.”
Aragon, On Spain, Sierra de Guara, Vultures in Spain, birds, lammergeyer | Tags: Alquezar, Griffon Vultures|
SEO sees Las Vegas II mega-casino project completely environmentally incompatible with the conservation of Los Monegros steppes, one of the most important natural areas in Aragon. (SEO)
Aragon, On Spain | |
Aragonese dinosaur man Rupert Glasgow of the excellent aragosaurus has kindly sent me this news review of their recent work with dinosaurs.
theropod dinosaur tooth (aragosaurus) Leer
Aragon, Paleontology in Spain | Tags: Cretaceous, Dinosaurs, ichnites, Teruel|
Henri Cartier-Bresson visited Castile and Aragon for Magnum Photos in 1963. More here. The photos are of landscapes in Segovia, somewhere in Castilla and Aragon near the Soria border (last two). It would be interesting to compare the treeless hills in the two photos of Aragon with today. They will be very probably be forested now.
Aragon, Castilla y León, Human geography of Spain, Spanish landcape, photography | |
What remains of the glacier of Monte Perdido, the second largest in the Pyrenees and covering in 2001, 44 ha down from 556 in 1894, has just been declared a National Monument by the Aragonese government. This will presumably save it from climate change. (El Mundo)
Aragon, Aragonese Pyrenees, Spanish landcape, climate change | |
A white-tailed eagle (Lat. Haliaaetus albicilla - Sp. Pigargo común) has been seen in Spain for first time in 53 years on Monte Perdido. Observan por primera vez un ejemplar de pigargo europeo en Monte Perdido (El Mundo). This is the first time the bird has been sighted in Aragon. The images were taken by an automatic camera set up to monitor fauna.
According to the Libro Rojo de las Aves, the last sightings of white-tailed eagle in Spain were:
Albufera de Valencia (1887 and 1916), Castellón (1942) and Delta del Ebro-Tarragona (1953). Each individual was shot.
This Ministerio de Medio Ambiente document states they are classified as extinct, and that once definately bred in the Balearics (Ibiza and Mallorca) the latter in 19th (?) century, and possibly in Girona
See
Pigargo_comun.pdf
Follow forum thread on white-tailed eagle in Spain here http://forum.iberianature.com/index.php?topic=22.0
Aragon, birds | |
I’ve been invited by Josele J. Saiz to stay a couple of day at his Boletas Birdwatching Centre in the Sierra de Guara in Huesca. More on him soon. While there I hope to talk to Oscar Díaz of the Fundación Quebrantahuesos (English) as part of research for the book. FCQ, one of the most active wildlife groups in the Pyrenees, works in the conservation of lammergeyers, but also in the conservation of the Pyrenees in general. I’ve been doing a bit of background reading on the lammergeyer or bearded vulture. What an utterly remarkable bird this is.
Photo by F. Marquez.
This is the world’s only bone-eater. They feed on marrow which they get by dropping bones repeatedly onto rocks, as their Spanish name, quebrantahuesos, aptly suggests. They’ll come back again and again to their favourite rocky areas known in English as ossuaries.
The evocative English Lammergeier or Lammergeyer (both correct) comes from the German, lammergeier, meaning “lamb-vulture“. This was apparently coined by 19th century naturalists due to the mistaken and incredibly widespread belief across Central Europe that they would take young lambs.
They are also known in English as bearded vultures. This is in reference to the ochre ruff of quills they sport around their necks. They are not born with this colour, but acquire the colour by actively seeking out iron-rich muds and rubbing their feathers in them. One theory goes that in a stand-off, the redder the feather, the tougher the lammergeyer, though I need to check this.
The female lammergeyer lays one egg, and then a few days later, lays another. The second chick plays the role of a substitute if the first egg fails to hatch. In most cases, the second chick dies, despite the efforts of its parents to feed it: the older sibling is stronger and takes its food. And then, when the right moment arrives it will kill its brother or sister. This is known by biologists as Cainism, the advantage being that if the first chick fails to hatch or dies young the second chick is at hand. Some of these second chicks are now being rescued are used as part of a captive breeding programme in Andalucia.
• The most serious problem for the bird is poisoning. Some 40% of unnatural deaths of lammergeyers in Spain are from poisoned meat put out principally, these days, to kill foxes, though in the past the bird also suffered from more direct persecution
• Unusally, reproductive units can be comprised of two or three adults. Groups of three appear to be more common that thought. In the latter case there usually are two males and one female, although exceptionally reproductive units made up of four specimens have been observed. The members of the group mount each other as part of a bizarre mating simulation, male on male and female on male.
Currently the Spanish Pyrenean population is comprised of around 125 occupied territories (2004) with an estimated pre-adult population of 156-162 specimens distributed in an area of 21,000 km2. Perhaps the best site to them is the Sierra de Guara with 12 bearded vulture territories, the densest population in Europe. ,
There really is so much more. Just about the only live prey they take are tortoises, which they also dash on the rocks, though as they have been pushed out of low-lying areas this may no longer occur, and certainly not in Spain. Legends abound across Eurasia and Africa. There are for instance strong associations with the pheonix and the bearded vulture. More on this soon. More on lammergeyers in Spain and here on lammergeyer around the world
Aragon, Aragonese Pyrenees, Pyrenees, Sierra de Guara, Vultures in Spain, birds, lammergeyer | Tags: bearded vulture|
