THE BONELLI’S EAGLES BORN THIS YEAR LEAVE THESE DAYS THE PATERNAL TERRITORIES

The young eagles born this year in the Catalan territories begin to leave the territories of their ancestors during the first weeks of September. They initiate this way his period of emancipation, in that they will march far from the birthplace until finding a zone rich in preys that is not located in any territory of adult individuals, in the areas called of dispersion. In these areas they will spend his first two or three years of life, having learned to hunt and to be worth by themselves, and those that are able to survive will move later to the nesting areas to look for an own territory where to settle.

Studies made in the last years by the Equip d’Estudi de l’Àliga Perdiguera indicate that these displacements can be short, of few hundreds of kilometers, or longer, of even more of a thousand of kilometers. In the case of the young eagles born in Catalonia they mainly move to the areas of dry land of the province of Lérida but also there are some young eagles that carry out much more long displacements that take to them to zones of the center or the south of the Iberian Peninsula, like for example the provinces of Toledo or Cadiz. In many of these areas the existence of a high mortality of young eagles has been detected, caused mainly by electrical lines or persecution. The application of measures of conservation in all the dispersion areas of the Iberian Peninsula is a fundamental requirement to guarantee the regular incorporation of new individuals to the nesting populations of Bonelli’s eagle of the European southwest.