Feathered friends in the Balearics

THE Balearic Islands Environment department has sent 15 specimens of red kite to Andalucia to reinforce the population in the southern region.

The birds were hatched in Mallorca and will go towards repopulating the Sierra de Cazorla, Segura y las Villas nature park near Jaen, the largest protected area in Spain and the second in Europe.

This is the third consecutive year that the Balearic government has collaborated in the repopulation project and has so far sent 30 red kite chicks to the Andalucia province.

The safe extraction of the birds was made possible thanks to the collaboration of several entities and organisations, with experts tracking the reproductive populations in Mallorca to locate the nests and then take the hatchlings in the safest possible conditions.

The chicks were kept at the installations managed by the Consortium for the Recovery of the Fauna of the Balearic Islands (COFIB) in Santa Eugenia, where they were fed and cared for until their transport towards the mainland.

The remaining birds in the nest were ringed and equipped with tracking devices to monitor them and obtain information regarding their movements and mortality.