Cape Vulture Count

During the winter breeding months myself, Mike Neethling and Roger Uys do the Cape Vulture breeding count at Oribi Gorge. The first count of the season was held in June and due to the unavailability of Mike we postponed the 2nd count until vulture Awareness Day on Saturday 3rd September. Andy Ruffle of Birdlife Trogons joined us for the day and hopefully the club will become more involved in the future.

Immature Vultures are the outer 2 birds with adults in the middle

This season has been an exceptionally good season with a record number of 25 chicks at this stage, our previous record was 18 chicks. In addition to this we counted 73 adult birds which is a conservative number and is possibly closer to 85 or 90 birds. Our next step is to try and ring some of chicks either next season or the season afterwards in the hope of finding out where these young birds travel to before they start their breeding and hopefully adding to the worlds population of Cape Vultures which is estimated to be about 2600 birds.



Adult birds flying above the nesting site

Adult bird in effortless flight