Local man spots rare Egyptian vulture in South Roscommon

It's a long way from the Athlone area of South Roscommon to the Egyptian vulture's usual haunts in southern Europe or northern Africa.

But for what's thought to be only the second time ever, the rare bird was spotted in Ireland at the weekend by local man Owen Murphy, who is the warden for Lough Ree and the mid-Shannon Callows for the North Midlands Region with the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS).

The bird, a male, was first seen by Owen as he was on his way to survey some winter waders and monitor species on the western shore of Lough Ree on New Year's Eve morning. It is the first sighting of the bird in Roscommon and is thought to be only the second in Ireland, the first happening on the northern coast of the country during the summer.

Describing it as a “fairly chance encounter”, Owen said he was driving out the Roscommon Road when he glimpsed “a relatively large bird” off in the distance beyond some open farmland in the area.

“So it just caught my eye, and I said I better pull in and check what he is. I happened to have binoculars beside me on the passenger seat,” he explained. “When I got a safe place to pull in, I looked back across and it turned out to be an Egyptian vulture which is not something I was expecting to see on a New Year's Eve morning,” a delighted Mr Murphy said on RTE's Morning Ireland on Monday.

He later posted about the rare sighting in a Facebook bird group, and local student Conor Henry, who is studying Wildlife Biology in Tralee, set off in the afternoon to see if he could capture the rare bird on camera, and he did so to great effect, some distance away from the original sighting.

While in the bird of prey family, the Egyptian vulture does not hunt and generally feeds on dead remains. Often nicknamed the 'the pharoah's chicken' or the 'white scavenger vulture', it is a quite a large bird, around the size of a heron, and has a sharp, narrow beak with scraggly plumage. It is very distinctive when it soars up in the air.

Asked why the bird happened to end up in Ireland, Owen Murphy said it's a bit of a mystery. “It's more than likely the same bird (as spotted in the summer) how he ended in Ireland is a mystery. That's the beauty I suppose of wildlife. Whether he got caught in a thermal or disorientated, we don't know but they don't usually venture in. They would be occasionally seen in Spain but they don't venture further than that.”

The Egyptian vulture sighting caused a bit of a stir in birdwatching circles, with people travelling from many parts of Ireland to try and see it. Mr Murphy also confirmed that a cattle egret was also spotted in the Lanesboro area in recent days, the first time the bird has been seen in Longford/Roscommon. Lough Ree has been rated as a very important site for breeding waterbirds, according to an NPWS report this year, with the Shannon Callows also being rated highly. The area boasts large numbers of red and amber listed species with 'rarities' popping up on occasion.

The Egyptian vulture does not pose a threat to the public or to livestock, because while it is a bird of prey, it does not hunt, preferring to eat roadkill or other dead animals it happens across.