Thursday, August 14, 2014

SOUNDS OF KENYA: Vulture Scramble

In this line of work we see a lot of hyenas on carcasses.  If you stick around long enough, this leads to seeing a TON of vultures on carcasses.  Vultures here have amazing eyesight and are quickly clued in to a carcass by feeding carnivores, loping hyenas, and other vultures.  I have seen over thirty vultures arrive at a hyena den where there is only a small, meatless scrap.  They seemed to appear from out of nowhere, seemingly because they happened to sight other vultures swooping in.  They all waddled around very disappointed in the lack of available meat, but that didn't stop the bravest ones from approaching the den hole and trying to scare the cubs off of their carcass scrap toy.

At most kills, the vultures will fly in and wait patiently on the outskirts for the hyenas to finish.  Once enough hyenas move away from the kill though, they begin sneaking in to grab mouthfuls of meat.  A lone hyena on a kill will futilely attempt to chase the vultures off now and then, but its never long before they are sneaking back in.  Once the last hyena decides they've had their fill (either of meat or chasing vultures) and abandons the carcass, the vultures swarm over it, stripping every last bit of edible meat, tendon, and connective tissue from the carcass bones.

It looks a lot like this, but more frenetic:






And it sounds exactly like this:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

SO COOL!! I love the sound bits!!! Keep 'em coming!

dee said...

7413Kenna great post, I just love your "sounds of" series,please keep it up.


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