The Life Of Birds 4. Meat-Eaters (5 of 14)

The Life Of Birds

The warm columns of air rising from the baking ground and captured by their broad wings carries them up with very little expenditure of energy on their part and supports them there.
They scan the ground beneath them, but they also keep a sharp eye on one another.
A lappet-faced vulture is on the ground beside a carcass.
Griffon vultures have noticed it and have started to wheel downwards.
0thers have already joined the lappet-faced around the kill.
As more birds glide down, their descent is noticed from miles away in all directions.
And as each bird reacts, the news that a kill has been discovered spreads across the network of watchers in the sky.

More and more start circling downwards towards the banquet.
Within a few minutes, the carcass is submerged beneath a dense scrum of struggling birds.
Lacking feathers on their heads and necks, they do not unduly soil themselves as they plunge their heads deep into the carcass.
And still more come.
The big cats may make most of the kills on the Serengeti, but most of the meat produced on the plains is consumed, not by lions and leopards, but by vultures.