1st EGYPTIAN VULTURE for Scilly

14th June 2021

And also the first EYGPIAN VULTURE in Britain in over 150 years!!! First seen and photographed over Peninnis Head by a non birder, Jennie Trevithick this morning and then some three hours later, Will Wagstaff had it fly over his head on Tresco where it perched up in a pine on the north side of Pool Road. Photo by Ken Fox

Like others, due to work, I couldn’t get over to Tresco. However, Ren picked the EGYPTIAN VULTURE perched in the pine while scanning from Star Castle where we managed to tick off this mega. Bobby ‘Dazzler’ Dawson, who twitched the vulture on Tresco, kept us all informed of it’s movements on the latter island on the Scilly Bird News whatsApp group. It was dead on 14.00 when he put the news out that it was off Carn Near. I dropped everything, ran like the devil from out of the Castle garden to the front and grabbed my bins out of me wagon. I scanned like crazy in the direction of Carn Near but could I see the bloody thing? Surely a large bird like this should be easy to spot off Tresco? I calmed down and started scanning all over the shop in the direction of Tresco and then! I picked it up circling reasonably high over The Roads before it started drifting towards the north end of St Mary’s. It felt like I was back in Tarifa, Spain, observing an Egyptian Vulture coming across the Gibraltar Straits, in off the sea from Morocco. But this was Scilly and I just couldn’t take it in that there was this large impressive raptor flying around on the islands and I was now watching it from my work! For the next hour, it was being reported all over the shop just down road but I was so busy at work that it would have to fly over the castle for me to have any chance of seeing it. That it didn’t and it was last seen at 14.30 heading high towards St Matins. Besides Spain, the only other counties that I’ve seen Egyptian Vulture is in Nepal and I found the 17th record for Gambia two years ago at Tanji Bird Reserve.

Although I didn’t see the vulture at close range like others on Tresco, my observation of it over The roads flying into St Mary’s was truly amazing experience and felt like I was back in Tarifa with raptors coming in off the sea from Morocco.

The EGYPTIAN VULTURE perched in the pine north of Pool road, Tresco where a few of us first ticked it off viewed from Star Castle all the way from on St Mary’s!! Crazy!! All photos taken by Ken Fox

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