Colours of Wildlife: Hooded Vulture
Created | Updated Nov 10, 2019
Hooded Vulture
Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"
This week I feature the Hooded Vulture, Necrosyrtes monachus. The scientific name means 'the monk that pulls at dead things'. In Afrikaans we call it a 'monnikaasvoël' or 'monk vulture'. It has a 'hood' of creamy, downy feathers at the back of its head, suggesting the hood of a monk. The rest of its face and neck is bare and pink, but flushes bright red when it is excited. Juveniles have dark 'hoods' … they turn white with age just as the hair of humans! Hooded vultures occur over much of sub-Saharan Africa, except for the equatorial rainforest belt. They live in various habitats: woodlands, savannahs, grassland, even in villages and towns, especially in West Africa. Despite being able to co-exist with humans, they are suffering a rapid decline in numbers, like all other vultures.
Vulture in the Hood
Hooded vultures with their close-fitting 'hoods' are easy to recognize if seen well. They are among the smaller vultures in Africa. They have thin, fine-tipped bills, not so good for tearing into carcasses but better for picking at small scraps. Their plumage is almost entirely blackish brown, with only some whitish feathers around their crops and on their thighs. They have ruffs of longer feathers around their necks.
In West Africa, this species has for long associated with humans. Hooded vultures hang around towns, especially places like abattoirs, garbage dumps, market places, farm fields and areas with livestock. They even hitch rides on the backs of cattle or goats. At universities in Ghana, almost half the students get hit with vulture droppings at least once a month! They are locally called garbage collectors, which they essentially are … providing their services for free.
Small and relatively weak, hooded vultures are dominated by other, bigger vultures at animal carcasses. They have a skulking demeanour, crouching and keeping their heads low. They are agile and can run in and grab something from under the nose of a predator or bigger vulture. They can pick meat out of narrow crevices, or like chickens peck up small bits from the ground that other vultures have missed. They can hold pieces of meat with their feet and tear them into smaller strips with their bills. Feeding neatly, they don't get smeared full of blood and gunk. They often scavenge the carcasses of small animals, or dead fish on the margins of drying pools. They also eat insects, favouring large swarms of flying termites, and will follow humans ploughing fields for the grubs uncovered. They also eat human and animal faeces. To find food, they sometimes follow predators and scavengers like wild dogs and hyenas. They can even be attracted by playing back recorded hyena calls!
Among each other, hooded vultures use their face-flushing skills to establish dominance. It is similar to humans blushing: blood vessels in the face can rapidly be filled to increase its redness. Adults will flush red at each other, or at juveniles, or older or stronger juveniles will flush red at younger ones. This seems to be enough to cow them! Sometimes things come to blows … vultures fight by lunging at each other with their clawed feet.
Hooded vultures breed in trees, favouring the big and beautiful Jackal Berry, of the Ebony family, or tall palm trees. Their nests tend to be quite high up, in the crown of the tree. It is a stick nest with a neat bowl. The female almost always lays just a single egg, but two eggs and two chicks raised has been seen on rare occasions. In typical fashion, the parents bring the chick food in their crops, regurgitating it to its mouth. The chick starts out densely covered in brown down; by about a month, its quill feathers start to grow, and it also becomes capable of blushing red at this age. It fledges aged 80-130 days, and may be cared for by its parents for another two to four months. It starts out with a whitish-grey face with a blackish hood; as it matures, its face turns pink and its hood creamy white.
Shocking Decline
This vulture, once abundant in Africa, is now critically endangered. Only in the Gambia and a few other West-African countries do significant numbers remain. In South Africa it is now found almost nowhere but in the Kruger National Park. This vulture has suffered from poisoning, both deliberate and accidental, and from hunting. Some people eat it, others use its body parts medicinally. It doesn't suffer from habitat destruction so much, since it is able to live in heavily human-modified environments, but it needs tall trees for breeding. It does die from colliding with electricity pylons from time to time. It's known to be infected by Avian Flu, perhaps from scavenging poultry carcasses. The most important way to conserve this vulture is to limit the use of poisons and to educate the public about its value as a living, thriving animal.
