Two weeks ago we reported on finding Daniel, the young male bearded vulture’s transmitter near the Kauberg in KwaZulu-Natal’s Drakensberg. Since then a expedition was organised to find that of Andalucia, the juvenile female bearded vulture that had also shed her transmitter at about the same time as did Daniel. It had stopped transmitting somewhere in the mountains of the north Eastern Cape, just south of Lesotho.

Most of all, as the rescue team set out across the mountains just north of Maclear, Rhodes and Barkly East last week, they were hoping not to find her dead body attached to the transmitter. Bearded vultures are dangerously close to extinction.

"Bearded vultures don’t breed until they are five or six years old and then they pair up for life," explained Sonja Krüeger, who co-ordinates the group from Howick in KwaZulu-Natal, where she is an ecologist with KZN Wildlife.

"But the worrying thing is that it is the juveniles of one or two years old that are being wiped out and no one is quite sure why or how. The GPS transmitters that were fixed to Daniel and Andalucia are part of the project to find out. It looks like we will have to use a second and wider band of Teflon as they have now also started doing in Europe, to ensure it stays on. The transmitters cost between R25 000 and R30 000, not counting all the logistical arrangements to catch the birds. It took 4 weeks of field work to perfect a technique to catch 3 birds last year! Add to that the R1000 monthly fee for the downloading of the satellite data from a French satellite and you have an understanding of the expense involved in monitoring the bearded vultures. "

The rescue mission involved four days of hiking across 70km. Tanya Smith, Xanthe Holmes and Johan van der Merwe and the guide dog, Gemma, reached the place where, according to the GPS co-ordinates, the transmitter had sent its last signal at the end of the afternoon on the second day. There was no sign of either Andalucia or the transmitter. Nearby is a little settlement of Basotho homesteads and animal kraals. Perhaps a herdsman or even a child had picked up the transmitter, was the group’s thinking. None of the three speak any seSotho and after agonising deliberation, they decided to turn back and turn the task over to people who could speak seSotho.

Andalucia’s fate is presently still unknown. Precious funding has been sourced so that next year about 20 juvenile vultures can be tagged and the slow work of investigating what causes their demise.

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