Back to vultures… Austria to France

I spent the last week or so being a tourist with old and new friends in both Rotterdam and Vienna. But now I’m back on the job. I have to get up early in the morning, so a couple of gallery links will have to suffice.
The first set is of my first day at Hans’ breeding and rehab center, wherein the bird from Helsinki gets his wings bleached and some medical attention given to a broken flight feather. The center has a ton of birds (in addition to vultures, mostly corvids, falcons, owls, and eagles) and other animals. Click here.

The next set is packing up Helsinki, a press conference at Schonbrunn zoo where bird number two gets named “Gerlinde” after a mountain climber, and a drive across the Italian Alps at 140 kph. With one stop. Oof, my back. Click here.

I’m not ashamed to say that one of the highlights was having dinner at a truck stop that served fresh (and perfectly al dente) pasta pomodoro with a white bean salad and an olive oil bread stick. The main highlight though, was sitting next to the vulture the whole way, and having one of those eyes looking at me every now and then.