Donna Elvira was abandoned near Melchsee-Frutt last summer at the age of 95 days. The bird could not fly then. When he was fledged, he spent several months in the Bernese Oberland, in the cantons of Glarus and Valais and in the Domodossola area in Italy, as the Bearded Vulture Foundation announced on Thursday.
At the end of 2021, the bearded vulture, equipped with a transmitter, returned to Obwalden. The Bearded Vulture Foundation noticed that Donna Elvira was acting strangely. The flight maneuvers were conspicuous, after all she spent the night in a meadow in Kerns OW.
The local game warden was able to capture the bird and save it from death. It turned out that Donna Elvira collided with a transport cable and injured herself, the Bearded Vulture Foundation announced.
The female bird is now being cared for in the Nature and Animal Park in Goldau. It is still unclear how well it will recover, it said. If it cannot be reintroduced into the wild, it will be included in the international breeding program.
Thirteen young bearded vultures have been released into the wild in Central Switzerland since 2015. In 2018, the bearded vulture Alois collided with a hanging cable on a transport railway in the canton of Nidwalden and was fatally injured.
Donna Elvira is not the only wild bird that the Goldau Nature and Animal Park is currently caring for. He also has a golden eagle in his care that was shot at in December 2021 in the canton of Uri.
The eagle was found in the Rynächtflue area in the municipality of Schattdorf, the Uri canton police said on Thursday. He suffered broken bones. If the healing process is satisfactory, reintroduction is possible again. So far there is no information on the perpetrators and the location of the shooting.