Birds Without Borders: Indian vulture, the hermits of cliffs who continue to live precariously

However, they do mind privacy and do not entertain uninvited fellow vultures. Watching a vulture scaring the intruder away with open wings, humpy back, and lowered neck in an attacking posture is fun. They have a wingspan of two metres.

Once the sun shines brighter, they start circling in a flock, gliding and soaring higher in the sky. They have creamy brown hair around their neck and thighs that looks like a long winter coat that Europeans often wear to protect themselves from the cold. Vultures sometimes retract their neck to keep their bodies warm.

Indian vultures look brown. Their face and neck are comparatively darker. Their neck and head have white fur. The beak is long with curved tips. When they are soaring in the sky, the round shape of their wings is more apparent. Their underwings are comparatively lighter brown and look merged with the lower body while observed in flight.

Indian vulture’s eyesight and smell senses are so powerful that they can notice a faraway carcass. It has been noted that their visual acuity is 135 cycles per degree (A human with 20/20 vision has a visual acuity of 30 cycles per degree). Once a vulture from the flock notices a carcass and gets down to feed, the rest all gather within no time.

They put on quite a show of grunts and hisses while feeding on the dead. The probable reason is their choice of meat. They pierce through the skin and tear out meat, using their tongue to eat flesh. With the help of their spiky tongue, some vulture species even clean flesh from bones. They rarely attack a small wounded mammal to eat.

Vultures are scavengers. They feed on carcasses of cows, buffaloes, sheep, goats, etc. Their favourite feeding places are near slaughterhouses, dump yards, gaushalas, and panjrapoles (cattle shelters run by charitable organisations). Their metabolism is very good, and their stomach is so acidic (pH = 1.0) that they can digest such bacteria that are otherwise dreadful to other animals.

Vultures are nature’s cleaners. Indian vultures were found in good numbers almost everywhere in Gujarat and many other states of India. During the early 21st century, incidents noted that diclofenac was poisonous to vultures and that the common veterinary drug was killing vultures through kidney failure.

Diclofenac was a drug used by veterinary doctors to treat sick cattle. When such cattle died and got consumed by the vultures, the meat adversely affected the health of the vultures. Thus, we lost many vultures, and their population is decreasing. On International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, Indian vultures are listed as a critically endangered (CR) species.

For context, Asiatic lions, whose only wild population in the world is surviving in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat and whose population was estimated to be 674 in 2020, have been categorised as endangered, a step better than Indian vultures, on the IUCN’s red list of threatened species.

A total of nine vulture species are found in India. Among them, Gujarat has four species, including Indian vultures, which are now noted as rare residents of the state. Earlier, they were plentiful in Saurashtra and fairly common at Mount Girnar, Shatrunjaya Hills and Barda Hills, as noted by ornithologist R S Dharmkumarsinhji.

Within Gujarat, they are restricted to a few colonies in Junagadh, Gir Somnath, Bhavnagar, Amreli, Kutch, Sabarkantha, Anand, Panchmahal and Mahisagar districts only. The 2022 vulture survey by the Gujarat forest department pegged the population of Indian vultures to just 363 individuals.

Dr Jayendra M Bhalodiya is an assistant professor at Ahmedabad University. He is affiliated with Bird Conservation Society, Gujarat and Eco Friends Gujarat.