Mkambati Vultures

Despite being in South Africa for just a fortnight, I was offered an opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up.  A week down in the Eastern Cape to help Morgan Pfeiffer with her first Cape Vulture surveys.  This was to be the reconnaissance trip for the upcoming breeding season.  Probably the only chance I’d have to get out and about before starting my own research in earnest.

To help us we also recruited two 19 yr old guys from Durban… now that there were Shane, Shane, Dane and Morgan on this trip, well, any takers for a poem or Haiku?  Alas despite a week of internalizing the possibilities I am empty handed for you. All credit to Dane and Shane, they were energetic, and both had a sharp wit that endured, despite the very early starts.

It was a grueling eight hour drive to reach Mkambati Nature Reserve,  a little longer than expected on account of misleading roadsigns that directed us on a 2 hour dirt-road ‘shortcut’.  Arriving at the reserve sometime later in April, we had enough time to meet with the park rangers and settle into the lodging. The accommodation looked good from the outside… a house!  But it was under renovation, and stark on the inside.  A peculiar mix of camp-stove cooking by lantern in the kitchen, hot showers, of beds and crisp linen, and a distinct absence of a toilet seat.  I slipped into the role of camp chef [sic], cooking the team bacon and eggs at the early hours of pre-dawn, and rice and beans at night. A minor watch malfunction (praise you and curse you ‘world time’ function) and the breakfast one morning was hastily cooked and served well over an hour earlier than necessary.

Morgans research starts this month with a re-assessment of the numbers breeding at this colony. Surveys were conducted in 2010 and previous years, and apparently this colony is on the increase.  It is also the closest Cape Vulture colony to a coastline, which effectively reduces their available foraging area by half. 

Mid-morning on the first day - none of us knew quite what to expect

Rondavels on the way from coast to cliffs

The view back to the beach from the vulture colony

We needed to conduct early season counts of the colony cliffs, and to get there early in the morning before thermals allowed the vultures to leave on their foraging forays.  So out at 5.30am and starting the days work in the dark with a brisk walk along the beach,  a twilight kayak across the estuary, then into a solid two hour uphill hike to the viewpoint. The hike was mostly easy walking though grazed and burnt grasslands, but occasionally crossing small streams with boggy rank-grass verges filled with locusts and frogs, obviously ideal for snakes. Yet with mixed feelings, I am both dissatisfied and relieved we didn’t come upon any.

On all but the first morning, we made it to the viewpoint before 9 am to see the first vultures drop from their roosts into space above the river gorge.  The rising sun was welcomed against the cold sea-breeze, but squinting thought the sunny haze and into the shadowed cliffs made our surveys difficult.  Around 300 vultures would be variously coming or going, some were landing on the grassy banks below us and tearing off streamers of grass, returning to their nest site to fuss with the décor.

Gyps coprotheres  Latin for Dung-eating Vulture

Descent with landing-gear down

Gathering nesting material

A small section of cliff

What a view!

After the counts, we’d take half an hour to enjoy the peacefulness of the place, and doze in the shade while contemplating another 2 hour hike back to the beach.  Plenty of swifts and swallows buzzed around us.  Occasionally, a family of Rock Kestrels was seen, a pair of Lanner Falcon buzzed past a couple of times, and the clucking of a fish-eagle echoed up from the Msikaba river below.

Relaxing on the clifftop under the welcome shade of a tree