My PhD project has brought me to Cazorla area several times for fieldwork. This wild mountain range in the north of Andalusia belongs to the second largest protected area in the whole European Union, Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y las Villas Natural Park, covering over 2000 km2. The forest extension holds extremely diverse fauna and flora along a set of hills, plateaus and gorges. Whimsical landscapes and inhabitants that make every visit memorable.
Cazorla is part of the Prebaetic System, which stretches east to the mountains of my hometown area in Alicante. However, the differential rain regime and altitude results in dominant flora species which are different to my region. Here, big parts of the montane forest are dominated by Pyrenean pine (Pinus nigra subsp. salzmannii), with some good-sized hollies (Ilex aquifolium) found here and there.
On my last visit these last couple of days, I got to know a very different area of the park: Campos de Hernán Perea, in Sierra del Segura. This large plateau sits at around 1700 m altitude and is covered in short grass. Indeed, some of the last transhumant shepherds in Spain have their sheep and goats grazing these vast grasslands from May to November, and then transfer it all the way to Sierra Morena in a mythical pilgrimage that, despite now being part of the ecosystem dynamics, is today almost lost. The shepherds and their livestock were now far away, but still I got to learn a lot about this ancestral practice from my director Toni Sánchez-Zapata and the researchers who joined this fieldwork, all great connoisseurs of transhumance.
The purpose of my visit was somewhat different. I wanted to visit a muladar or ‘vulture restaurant’, an area designed to feed wild vultures, to collect different samples. These obligate scavengers have undergone a series of conservation issues worldwide for decades, but muladares have been an important part in the comeback of vultures in Spain. Partially thanks to these facilities, Spain has now become the most vulture-diverse country in Europe and holds the largest populations of most of the species present in the world.
Eurasian griffons (Gyps fulvus) are by far the most abundant vultures in Spain and Europe. We drove to the muladar following the truck loaded with meat, weekly discards from the shepherds that stay over the winter. The griffons were familiar with such truck and hovered in hundreds above our heads. As we all entered the fenced muladar and the staff started dispatching the meat, it only took mere seconds for griffons to land. Some gracefully, some clumsily, but all very close to us.
The frenzy at a carcass site when these social scavengers are present is crazy. The way these animals make the most out of this resource is awesome. Hundreds of griffons ripped and tore tissues apart, breaking entrails and pulling guts like spaghetti. The whole scene might not seem welcoming to the apprehensive, but it is truly mesmerizing and worth observing.
We could only take our samples if the vultures stayed long enough on the muladar, so we decided to back up and hide on the other side of the hill so that they would not leave right after eating. We opened some tables and grabbed snacks to make the wait enjoyable. Tens of griffons flew in different directions, some quite close to the ground.
At a certain point Toni scoped the sky and pointed out that the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) had arrived. I had never been lucky enough to see it yet, and soon got goosebumps. As he saw it just flying behind some pine trees, I got nervous when it came out again. The formidable long-tailed, almost dragon-like silhouette of the bearded vulture really stood out among the numerous griffons. The smart bird, an adult, circled closer and closer for a couple of minutes. At a certain point it hovered right above us, giving us the best of views. We could even see the beard giving it its name before it turned towards the muladar. This was one of my life targets and it obliged.
The bearded vulture has some of the most unique diets among birds: around 70 – 90 % of it consists on bones. This extremely specialized diet can only be fit to a bird adapted to moving through extremely large home ranges, given that carcasses are generally an unpredictable resource in time and space, using minimal energy. Bearded vultures often throw bones from flight to crush them and access the marrow, the most nutrient-rich part of the bone. This habit gives them one of their English names, ossifrage — or their Spanish name, quebrantahuesos (literally “bone-crusher”).
Another name for this species is lammergeier (literally “lamb vulture”), as this species was traditionally thought to hunt and kill lambs and kids. Among other conservation problems, vultures have generally been infamous characters of tales and beliefs, and extensively targeted and chased. The population of this species consequently dropped in Europe. At a certain point it got extinct from most of Spain, the Alps, Carpathians and Balkans, and got restricted to the Pyrenees, Corsica and Crete within Europe.
Even before we recovered from the shocking first view, the very same individual reappeared flying very low over the montane bushes, merely one meter above the ground at a very close distance to us. There was no time for binoculars or cameras. It then hovered higher and joined the griffons and flew away, never to be seen again. This bird remained by far the highlight of this fieldwork trip.
However, Campos de Hernán Perea had much more to offer. The winter grassland cover was gray and looked lifeless — except for some endemic daffodils (Narcissus hedraeanthus) blooming here and there. However, the density of ungulates was impressive, with herds of European mouflons (Ovis musimon) and red deer (Cervus elaphus) roaming around (some even mixed). Some of us thought this is what Mongolia steppes might look like. Bird-wise, finding relatively numerous flocks of fieldfares (Turdus pilaris) gave an idea of the winter roughness in the area. Rock buntings (Emberiza cia), golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), wood larks (Lullula arborea), mistle thrushes (Turdus viscivorus) and ring ouzels (Turdus torquatus) were also readily seen.
Hearing stories from Toni about the very last ossifrage in south Spain patrolling these very skies just some decades ago gives a good perspective about the importance of Cazorla for the species. Perhaps only such a remote region with dense populations of wild and domestic ungulates co-existing could foster the very last of these dragons before they were completely wiped out. And perhaps these same features make it suitable for reintroduction projects like the one that brought these birds back some years ago. Toni is very familiar with the area and pointed some cliffs where bearded vulture pairs have lately attempted to establish nests. Imagining the skies
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