Bearded Vultures in Valais

The bird

Bearded vultures live almost entirely on bone. They carry the big ones up and drop them onto rock slabs to break them open. Adult plumage is naturally white underneath. The birds stain it rust-orange themselves by bathing in iron-rich mud, so every adult wears a slightly different colour. Young birds are dark all over for their first years and are easy to tell apart in the field.

They breed in the coldest part of the year, which is why pairs hold close to their cliffs from late autumn and why the winter months give the most consistent flying.

The photography

This is a birds-in-flight day. We work on autofocus set-up, shutter speeds for a large, slow-flapping bird, and above all on exposure, because a pale bird over snow under a changing sky will fool any meter.

Then we work on the picture itself: placing the bird against a peak instead of blank sky, waiting for the head turn, and using the mountains as a backdrop, not as an afterthought.

How we work around them

We photograph from positions the birds already pass on their own patrol routes. No baiting, no playback, and we keep well away from nest sites. If a bird changes its behaviour because of us, we are too close.