BirdLife Partners around the world have joined with raptor conservation and research organisations to celebrate International Vulture Awareness Day, with events and awareness raising taking place. This comes against a backdrop of problems facing vultures in Africa and Asia.

Vultures are an ecologically vital group of birds that face a range of threats in many areas that they occur. Populations of many species are under pressure and some species are facing extinction.

International Vulture Awareness Day, which took place on 1st September, provides a way to remind people of their plight and their importance.

Vultures fulfill an extremely important ecological role. They keep the environment free of carcasses and waste, restrict the spread of diseases such as anthrax and botulism, and help control numbers of pests such as rats and feral dogs by reducing the food available to them. They are of cultural value to communities in Africa and Asia, and have important eco-tourism value.

However, vulture populations are in steep decline across the globe. In India, populations of three formerly very common species of vulture have declined by more than 97% as a result of consuming cattle carcasses contaminated with the veterinary drug diclofenac.

In 2006, the governments of India, Pakistan and Nepal finally introduced a ban on the manufacture of diclofenac and pharmaceutical firms are now encouraged to promote an alternative drug, meloxicam, which is proven to be safe for vultures. The manufacturing ban has had some success in reducing the drug’s prevalence. Unfortunately, there is still no ban on the sale or use of the drug and the overall trend across South Asia remains one of continuing vulture declines.

In East Africa there have been mass vulture deaths associated with misuse of chemicals, huge population declines in West Africa due to habitat loss, and the disappearance of vultures from large areas of their formers ranges in South Africa because of the continued use of vulture parts in traditional medicine and sorcery.

Other threats include power line collisions and electrocutions, disturbance at breeding sites, drowning in farm reservoirs, direct persecution and declining food availability.

Cape Vulture

The Cape Vulture - Gyps coprotheres - is endemic to Southern Africa and is found mainly in South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana and Namibia.

Description

A large vulture with near-naked head and neck. Adult creamy-buff, with contrasting dark flight- and tail-feathers. Pale buff neck-ruff. Underwing in flight has pale silvery secondary feathers and black alula. Yellowish eye, black bill, bluish throat and facial skin, dark neck. Juveniles and immatures generally darker and more streaked, with brown to orange eyes and red neck. The two prominent bare skin patches at the base of the neck, are thought to be temperature sensors and used for detecting the presence of thermals.

Call

Calls are loud cackles, grunts, hisses and roars.

Food

Cape Vultures feed on carrion, searching aerially for a carcass to feed on. They can eat 1.5kg at a sitting, which is over 15 percent of the weight of an adult bird and can do this in five minutes. It slices off flesh with the sharp edge of its bill eating it and storing some in its crop, which can sustain it for about three days.

Breeding

It nests on cliffs and usually lays one egg per year.

Monogamous colonial nester, breeding in colonies. They nest and roost on cliffs and usually lay one egg per year. The nest is mainly built by the female, consisting of a bulky platform of sticks, twigs and dry grass, with a shallow cup in the centre lined with smaller sticks and grass. It is typically placed on a cliff ledge, often using the same site over multiple breeding seasons.

The breeding season is between May and June with a single egg laid, which is incubated by both sexes for about 55 to 59 days. The chick is brooded constantly for the first 72 days, while both parents feed it. It eventually leaves the nest at about 125-171 days old, becoming fully independent about 15 to 221 days later.

Conservation Status – Least Concern

Vulnerable globally. It is regionally extinct in Swaziland and Critically Endangered in Namibia. Its global population has decreased dramatically, the current population is estimated at 8,000. This is thought to have been largely caused by habitat loss, persecution for use in traditional medicine, human disturbance of colonies, poisoning and improvements in animal husbandry resulting in a decreased availability of carrion.

Birdwatching

These large Vultures can be seen on the following Aves Birding Tours/Safaris/Adventures: -

Aves Arid Birding Tour / Safari /Adventure.

Aves Eastern Cape Birding Tour / Safari /Adventure.

Aves Highlands / Tembe Birding Tour / Safari / Adventure.

Aves KZN Birding Tour / Safari / Adventure.

Aves North East Birding Tour / Safari / Adventure.

Aves North West Birding Tour / Safari / Adventure.

Aves Western Cape Birding Tour / Safari / Adventure.