For the time being, our school students are dealing with the species of our area which are in danger of being extinct. Among them, vulture is the most important one: it is called Egyptian Vulture and lives in the areas surrounding the rocks of the Meteora. For so many years, it has paid a lot of spring visits to this area on a permanent basis and has been  integrally linked to its animal farming tradition which made the inhabitants call it "cheese-maker". For the last 10 years the population of this species has been literally decimated since only 2 out of the 50 approximately  couples that used to exist there have survived.

The 1st Vocational High School of Trikala organized a special presentation on 11th March, with Mr Vavilis Dimitris- a cooperator of the Greek Ornithological Society-as a speaker so that the students would be given the chance to get fully informed on the subject.

Mr Vavilis also participates in the project LIFE+ that intends to help the Egyptian Vulture survive.

At the end of the presentation, which the students found particularly interesting, there was a discussion between them and the speaker who made a promise to support an activity the focal point of which would be  the Egyptian Vulture. With his valuable contribution, we were able to watch and monitor a couple of Egyptian Vultures inside their nest by means of  a telescope. During the whole procedure, Mr Vavilis answered a lot of students' questions. It was the first time these students took part in an activity like that.

Then, we headed for another part of Meteora where we were able to watch and monitor - by means of a telescope, of course- a black stork in his nest.

We must point out that during the whole activity, the weather conditions were awful -nearly seditious- since it was cold and constantly raining which reduced the duration of our activity.

Egyptian Vulture  - Trikala