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Ruppell's Vulture - blasted (1 Viewer)

John Cantelo

Well-known member
Since it's always an interesting read, I had a peak at Stephen Daly's blog (http://andalucianguides.blogspot.com/) on SW Spain today .... and rather wish I hadn't. There's a truly horrendous shot of a Ruppell's Vulture with most of one wing blasted apart. Sadly, criminally inclined shotgun carrying hunters all not entirely restricted to Malta,
 
I saw the same report on the Rarebirdsspain blog last night.

That's one lucky bird.

Beats me why anybody would want to take a shot at one.
 
Because they are idiots????

Its because they don't know how to appreciate such unique birds. According to 'Vultures of Africa' by Peter Mundy, this bird possess a powerful neck which is said to havr the 'power of a python' like that of the cape griffon, it dominates over the white-backed vultures and in turn dominated by cape griffons. It is capable of dominating over juvenile migrating eurasian griffons which are capable of dominating white-backed vultures.
Its a painful experience to be bitten by a griffon and thankfully lappet-faced vultures which are more powerful and have a larger and stronger beak are much less snappy towards people.
I hopethose people do some studying about birds and learn to appreciate them. Anyway, killing hyenas is causing the extinction of vultures (griffons and lappet-faced vultures) as without the bone flakes (the result of hyenas breaking those bones), the juvenile vultures learning to fly fall, break their bones, and die as they don't have the calcium which makes them strong enough to fly :(.
P/S: I don't know if its just a hunting tale but the first lappet-faced vulture seen (on a hippo carcase) was acctually killed by settler's one steller named levianthian (spelling) got excited a shot the bird but only wounded it and the vulture having just eaten its fill was too heavy to fly away but managed to defend itself for a 'fairly long time' before it finally seccumbed (the settler's used sticks to kill it) so those birds were eventually becoming extinct since the arrival of the settlers.
 
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