In October 2006 I was asked by the RSPB to join Ethiopian researchers of the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society (EWNHS) and Cagan Sekercioglu of Stanford University to track down some of the rarest birds in the world, the last free migrating Northern Bald Ibis or Waldrapp (Gernonticus eremita) in their winter habitat in the highlands of Ethiopia. Armed with a radio, a GPS and some coordinates received from the satellite tags on three of the birds, whose summer grounds are found near Palmyra in Syria, we discovered four adult animals in a remote rural area north of Addis Ababa, but none of the juveniles that left the breeding colony (see Cagan’s entertaining report in Living Bird).
It has been quiet about the NBI for a while, until last month, when some birds were unexpectedly spotted in the Jordan valley and in Djibouti. Paul Eccleston reports the sightings in the Telegraph
If a bird species becomes that rare that you know three of the four adults by name, it feels like reading about your own family when the birds are mentioned in the press. I wish them all a safe trip home!

Photograph: Critically endangered Northern Bald Ibis in Ethiopia© Raf Aerts