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Perhaps this is Iberia’s signature bird species. Believed to be extinct in North Africa, it now only breeds in Portugal and Spain having returned to the Alentejo in 2003 after an absence of some 20 years. In the 1960s the world population had fallen to just 30 pairs and although conservation measures have led to a recovery in fortunes, it remains one of the world’s rarest raptors with just 485 pairs known in 2016.
In most years a few juveniles are seen at Sagres during the height of the autumn raptor migration.
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