COMMUNICATIONS

Looking up at the sky this morning I saw the vultures circling and I realized they must have spotted something somewhere.  Years ago I attended a lunch at which we had a speaker who had to "work for his free lunch": it was the ornithologist of the Transvaal Museum, Mr Otleff Prozesky who talked about vultures.  Most of us have seen vultures, if not in the flesh, then on TV, and perhaps wonder how they tell each other: "Food! Come!"

He started his talk by explaining that the vultures do not smell the carrion, but that it is purely a matter of their wonderful eyesight.  They roost overnight in trees and well after sunrise they start flying.  They are of course top experts in this: they use thermals (funnels of hot air rising) as their ladder and they use this natural lift to conserve energy, as they then just spread their wings and glide upwards until they are just black spots to the normal human eye, and each vulture patrols a particular piece of ground which he knows as well as you know the palm of your hand (perhaps better!).  The vultures also keep track of their friends, each patrolling his own bit, and whenever one of them sees something lying still where there was nothing the previous day, and, when he is sure that it is a carcass, he starts descending and his pal flying next door sees that and he also starts descending and within a couple of minutes ten to twenty vultures, who have been watching each other, can be seen circling a particular part of the bush, looking for a place where they can land.  If the bush is dense, they prefer to land in a tree, just to make sure that the original owners of the carcass are not around any more, but in more open savanna they land near the carcass and immediately start tearing it to pieces.  The "hows" and "whys" of this tearing process can be the subject of a separate blog!

Enjoy your meal as much as the cleaners of the bush enjoy theirs!

Oupa

Phumula Kruger Lodge

Maloth Park