The young Egyptian vulture Diego has been on an incredible and totally unexpected journey since the end of April 2021: a 13,200 km tour outside Italy that has taken him to visit or just fly over 13 European countries.
The restless Egyptian vulture, who crossed the Adriatic Sea and reached the Balkans on 26 April, also stopped in Hungary from 8 to 16 July and flew over Austria several times, adding to the 11 countries he had already visited previously: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and Greece.
Born in captivity at CERM in 2018 and released in Basilicata in 2019, until spring 2021 Diego had not shown a great attitude towards travel: he had limited himself to reaching western Sicily in both late summer 2019 and 2020 to spend there the winter and then return to Basilicata at the beginning of the following springs. Unlike most of its conspecifics, it has never ventured to migrate to sub-Saharan Africa.
However, since leaving Basilicata on 26 April, Diego has not stopped and his explorations are continuing; he is currently in Croatia. While it is true that the young of various vulture species often make erratic movements, it is also true that never before similar behaviour has been recorded by a captive-born vulture released in Italy.
The movements of the vagabond Egyptian vulture, which is equipped with a GPS device thanks to the support of the VCF Vulture Conservation Foundation, are constantly monitored by the ornithologists of the CERM Association and ISPRA. A vast network of ornithologists living in the various countries that Diego is visiting is following his extraordinary journey too; some of these ornithologists were able to observe him and also took beautiful pictures, especially in Hungary.
