IVAD-International Vulture Awareness Day 03. September 2011

It is always important to know some facts about such incredible birds like the Vultures, especially as it may help to tell people why it is good to try and save these beautiful birds.

Vulture is the name given to two groups of convergent evolved scavenging birds, the New World Vultures including the well-known Californian and Andean Condors, and the Old World Vultures including the birds which are seen scavenging on carcasses of dead animals on African plains. New World Vultures are found in North and South America, Old World Vultures in Europe, Africa and Asia, meaning that between the two groups, Vultures are found on every continent except Australia and Antarctica.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulture

Here are some interesting & amazing Information on Vultures

- The projectile vomit of a vulture, followed by the action of flying away, is its most common defensive tactic, against an adversary.
- Vultures can eat as well as digest meat, in any stage of decay. They can even endure diseases that would kill any other creature.
- Vultures do have the habit of building nests.
- Vultures can fly for hours at a stretch. Since they glide over thermal updrafts, grabbing a free lift, they do not get tired soon.
- Vultures have a very well developed and heightened sense of smell.
- In order to cool themselves as well as a measure of disinfecting their legs, vultures urinate.
- The urine of a vulture can kill any germ that it would have picked while walking through a cadaver.
- Since the head of a vulture is bald, bacteria find it difficult to stick to it. The ones that manage to do it are baked off by the vulture, using sunlight.
- In case a carcass has a very thick hide, which the vulture cannot open, it waits for a larger scavenger to eat first.
- Vultures usually have only one mate in a year.
- A female vulture lays eggs in a nest, made of sticks and leaves and built in trees and cliffs. The same nest might be used for a number of years.
- Vultures can completely eat the flesh of a small animal in less than half an hour.
- A group of vultures is known as a venue and when the group is seen in the air, circling together, it is called a kettle.
- Some of the vultures also eat bones, along with the flesh.
- Vultures have very sharp eyesight and on the open plains, they can spot a three-foot carcass even from four miles away.
- The turkey vulture is gentle and non-aggressive.
- Vultures circle in order to gain height as well as to search for food.
- Vultures have poor vision in the dark.
- Vultures have the same ancestor as storks.

Source: http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/facts-about-vulture-1858.html

Here are some captures of Vultures taken during our trips to South Africa....

Last but not least a video that we have taken in Kruger, all different kinds of Vultures in action.
It was so great to see all the interaction between the different birds.

Don't let the Vultures disappear!!!!