Whilst it is spectacular to see a kill, the aftermath is often even more interesting as scavengers sort out their pecking order.
I had flown out to Africa to meet up with top South African photographer Daryl Balfour to photograph wildlife for my paintings when I saw a particularly raw scramble for power.
We had spent the morning snapping a cheetah and her six cubs. We had already taken more than 1,000 photographs each, when we spotted some hyenas leaving a wildebeest kill with the inevitable committee of vultures waiting their turn.
They were mainly Rüppell’s griffon vultures with a few white backs thrown in. I always like to see vultures on a kill doing all their posturing and squabbling.
It had been a long morning and we couldn’t decide whether to stay and watch or to go back to camp. Then, four vultures came whirling in out of the sky. There was a strong wind stalling them as they came down to land.
The light was in the right direction for flight-shots and this made up our minds, so we stayed filling more memory cards with photographs of vultures.
We saw a Lappet-faced vulture, Africa’s largest with a three metre wingspan, overhead and quickly trained our cameras on him, waiting for landing shots.
It soon became clear he was not messing around and flew directly to the kill, right into a heap of 35 vultures.
As he landed, he managed to get one vulture in each of his talons, another one in his bill, whilst also flattening four with each wing.
With the sheer force of his entrance, this vulture had already taken care of 11 rivals - just the other 24 to sort out.
And, sure enough, within a few minutes of kung fu-vulturesque style moves that Bruce Lee would have been proud of, he had the kill all to himself.
We watched as some of the braver vultures, who were not on the end of a kicking the first time around, tried to pinch a bit of the kill - after all they had found it first.
But this aggressive bird would not let them within a three metre radius of either him or his prize. His antagonism was so captivating, we decided to dub him ‘Lappet- man’.
And, boy, did he have a large personal space threshold. In between ripping great lumps of flesh off the kill with his meat cleaver of a bill, he would give any approaching vulture a pounding with another spectacular set of moves.
Sometimes he would not let them go until they submitted to him, usually by playing dead.
Being vultures, they were not prepared to give up their claim without a struggle. The ones at the back made most of the noise, rushing forward and hissing to encourage the ones at the front to chase off Lappet-man. It was like watching bullies in a playground.
But after 30 minutes of commotion there were no birds left in the group prepared to try their luck. They had reluctantly decided to wait until Lappet-man was full, which under the circumstances would seem to be the most sensible option.
On the horizon we watched a black backed jackal wending its way onto the scene.
Could this plucky little character be a match for Lappet-man?
He made a confident approach and sent a few Rüppell’s packing and almost managed to get a tail feather out of one of them.
Knowing the competition he was up against, we tensed, our cameras poised for the next episode of Lappet-man’s reign.
The jackal slunk in from behind, and gave Lappet-man’s tail a bit of a tug. Clearly he had not been watching the battle during the past half hour.
At first, Lappet-man did not seem to react. Emboldened, the jackal moved around to tackle the bird head on.
With that, Lappet-man grabbed the jackal with such ferocity that the jackal decided he wasn’t quite so hungry after all and tried to make his escape. But the vulture would not let go.
The jackal, screeching and yelping in desperation, actually pulled Lappet-man seven or eight metres as he retreated through the crowd of winged onlookers.
Lappet-man eventually lost his grip and the jackal survived to limp away like a scalded cat, quite a contrast from his previously cocky entrance.
It was a cruel reprimand, but we did feel sorry for the jackal – after all, he was only after a few scraps.
But you had to give it to Lappet-man, whom we duly crowned king of the kill.
After he had had his fill, he flew off without a backward glance. Then it was our turn, we too had had our fill of photographs and so headed back to camp.
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Wildlife Diary -
