Supplementary feeding has long been used by conservationists to support struggling wildlife populations and perhaps nowhere more so than in vulture conservation. Although humans may have been feeding vultures directly or indirectly for centuries (as in the case of Tibetan sky burials, for example), actively doing so for conservation purposes is said to have originated at Giant’s Castle Game Reserve in the Drakensberg in 1966.
Vulture supplementary feeding sites, also known as ‘vulture restaurants’, are specific locations where carcasses and offal are leftfor the scavengers to feed on. The aim of the Giant’s Castle vulture feeding site was to support the local Bearded Vulture population in particular, but subsequently similar sites have become a popular intervention to assist declining vulture populations around the world. In the early 1980s the Vulture Study Group undertook a major project to promote the use of vulture restaurants in South Africa and by 1988 there were 40 documented feeding sites as well as others that were not formally recognised.
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EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS
Keith Barnes, co-author of the new Field Guide to Birds of Greater Southern Africa, chats about the long-neglected birding regions just north of the Kunene and Zambezi, getting back to watching birds and the vulture that changed his life.
footloose IN FYNBOS
The Walker Bay Diversity Trail is a leisurely hike with a multitude of flowers, feathers and flavours along the way.
Living forwards
How photographing birds helps me face adversity
CAPE crusade
The Cape Bird Club/City of Cape Town Birding Big Year Challenge
water & WINGS
WATER IS LIFE. As wildlife photographer Greg du Toit knows better than most.
winter wanderer
as summer becomes a memory in the south, the skies are a little quieter as the migrants have returned to the warming north. But one bird endemic to the southern African region takes its own little winter journey.
when perfect isn't enough
Egg signatures and forgeries in the cuckoo-drongo arms race
Southern SIGHTINGS
The late summer period naturally started quietening down after the midsummer excitement, but there were still some classy rarities on offer for birders all over the subregion. As always, none of the records included here have been adjudicated by any of the subregion's Rarities Committees.
flood impact on wetland birds
One of the features of a warming planet is increasingly erratic rainfall; years of drought followed by devastating floods. Fortunately, many waterbirds are pre-adapted to cope with such extremes, especially in southern Africa where they have evolved to exploit episodic rainfall events in semi-arid and arid regions. But how do waterbirds respond to floods in areas where rainfall - and access to water - is more predictable? Peter Ryan explores the consequences of recent floods on the birds of the Western Cape's Olifants River valley.
a star is born
It’s every producer’s dream to plan a wildlife television series and pick the right characters before filming.
