More about Hooded Vultures, Ethiopia
Hooded Vulture, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Yesterday I wrote about a Hooded Vulture (Necrosyrtes monachus) with missing feathers (click here to read). As promised I have several more photos to show today, including some much closer up than those shown yesterday. These photos were taken on the campus of Bingham Academy, Addis Ababa, the international school where my daughter was teaching last year. We went to visit her in December.
Hooded Vultures are found over a large part of sub-Saharan Africa. They are often found near human habitation and are not slow to clean up after human rubbish is dumped. I guess the school oval was an interesting and fruitful place for them to visit, especially after the students had finished eating lunch.
While this species can be locally abundant it has recently (2011) been placed on the IUCN Red List as an endangered species, with fewer than 200,000 individuals left. There has been a rapid decline in numbers in recent years due to poisoning by poachers not wishing the birds to attract attention to their kills. Some are taken for food and sold as chicken meat while others are victims of avian influenza. A further decline has been caused in some areas due to more hygienic waste disposal methods by abattoirs. This species mainly eats carrion but also feeds extensively on insects.
As an interesting side note, observant Australian readers will note that the tree this bird in perching in happens to be an Australian eucalypt. Many have been planted in the school grounds. There are also very extensive eucalypt forests surrounding Addis Ababa, many of them planted in the late 1800s. It is now used extensively for firewood and on construction sites.
Reference: BirdLife International 2011. Necrosyrtes monachus. In: IUCN 2011. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2011.2. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 07 February 2012.
Hooded Vulture, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Hooded Vulture, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Hooded Vulture, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Hooded Vulture, Ethiopia
Hooded Vulture, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
One of the more unusual birds I saw on my visit to Addis Ababa last December was this Hooded Vulture. In another post in a few days’ time I will show some close up photos of this species, but today I want to focus on this particular bird. It was soaring low over the oval of the international school where my daughter was teaching, Bingham Academy.
It was unusual for two reasons: I didn’t expect to see vultures on or near the school oval in the heart of the city of Addis Ababa, and I didn’t expect to see a large bird like this with a considerable portion of one wing missing. I have no idea as to why this bird was missing all those feathers but it didn’t seem to hinder its flying abilities one bit.
Perhaps my readers can suggest some possible causes.
Hooded Vulture, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Speckled Mousebird, Ethiopia
Speckled Mousebird (Colius striatus) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
One of the common birds I saw in the grounds of Bingham Academy during our two week stay in Ethiopia last December was the strange Speckled Mousebird (Colius striatus). It seems that this odd looking bird is named for its similarity to a mouse, especially its colour. When the feathers are fluffed it is also somewhat similar to a hunched up mouse – or so I think.
There was a family group of about a dozen in the garden and grounds of the school where my daughter was teaching. One of their favourite feeding places was in the jacaranda tree shown in flower in the photos. It was actually a little early for this tree to be flowering. They’d had unseasonably fine and warm weather just before and during our stay. The tree responded by flowering early despite the fact that the calendar said that spring was still a little way off.
Mousebirds feed on fruit, nectar, seeds, leaves and berries. It is found in eastern and southern Africa.
Speckled Mousebird (Colius striatus) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Speckled Mousebird (Colius striatus) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Speckled Mousebird (Colius striatus) Addis Ababa, Etahiopi
Dusky Turtle Dove, Ethiopia
Dusky Turtle Dove, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
The Dusky Turtle Dove (Streptopelia lugens) was a challenging bird for me to photograph during my visit to Ethiopia last December. Although they were relatively common on the school campus where my daughter was teaching, during our 2 week stay this species was almost reclusive in nature. One evening I stealthily chased one around the playground trying to get a photo. It was almost dark and the flash needed to be employed, but the bird keep moving around quickly and generally just out of effective reach of the flash.
On another occasion one bird was feeding in the car park right out in the open. Again it was in poor light and the bird keep moving around rapidly, to quickly to get the camera focussed on it. All those shots were blurred. In the end, I only managed to get 2 photos reasonable enough to show here. That’s nature photography I guess. You win some, you lose some – and the rest are just plain challenging.
Doing a little research on this species I have found little in the way of information online. It appears that both males and females of this species, along with closely related species, are able to produce “crop milk”, a soft lumpy substance resembling cheese. When it is fed to the young it nourishes them with its high protein content. Read more about it here.
Dusky Turtle Dove, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Pied Crows, Ethiopia
Pied Crow, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
During our visit to Ethiopia last December the common corvid I observed everywhere was the Pied Crow (Corvis albus) shown in today’s photos. In the grounds of the school where my daughter was teaching they were very common, sometimes numbering 30 – 50 in the gardens, on the oval or flying noisily overhead. They were not slow at picking through food scraps left by the students and were very tame, often allowing me to approach to within a metre or two.
Pied Crow, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Pied Crows are found in a range of habitats from urban, farming, grasslands and woodlands as well as along lakes and rivers. It is found throughout Ethiopia as well as Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania and in parts of neighbouring countries. In fact, it is found in most areas south of the Sahara throughout southern Africa, making it the most widespread of any crow or raven in Africa.
For my Australian readers, the Pied Crow is about the same size as the Little Raven and Little Crow, but smaller than the Australian Raven. Its call is just as mournful but harsher and throatier than our Little Raven.
Pied Crow, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Pied Crow, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Pied Crow, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia