Breeding Pair Identified in Ticino

For years, the male bearded vulture Herculis was considered missing. Thanks to our monitoring and genetic analysis of feathers we found, we were able to identify him and his mate—a wild-hatched bearded vulture with Engadine ancestors—as breeding birds in Ticino. 

The rings reveal: Herculis is the male

During routine checks of the first bearded vulture breeding pair in Ticino, Patrick Scimé, our regional coordinator on site, not only that one of the parents was wearing leg bands, but he was also able to decipher the engraved numbers from a great distance and thus determine the bird’s identity: it is the male Herculis.

The bird was released into the wild in 2015 in Italy’s Alpi Marittime National Park. It was last sighted in Italy and France in 2018—after which all traces of it were lost. We were all the more delighted when it became clear: Herculis is alive and has established himself as a breeding bird in Ticino.

The female with Engadine ancestry

The female’s origin remained unknown at first—until a blood sample from the young bird Lepontino II clarified its origin. The mother was identified as GT0092—a female hatched in the wild who was first recorded in 2016. She is a descendant of Felice (released into the wild in 2001 in the Swiss National Park) and Heinz-Serraglio, one of the very first wild-hatched bearded vultures in the National Park (hatched in 2007).

Such data allow us to trace the family lines of bearded vultures seamlessly across several generations. This information is invaluable to us—it helps us assess the genetic diversity of the population and the bearded vultures’ chances of survival in the Alps as accurately as possible.