Africa; what can you say. There is just something about the name that conjures up mystery, intrigue and adventure. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit and work there just over a year ago, in October 2005, and I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday.

Representing The Hawk Conservancy Trust, I was one of a small party of four working alongside Dr Mark Anderson in a project that entailed working with African White-backed vultures (Gyps africanus).

The aims of the project were to:

• identify all the vulture nest sites within a given area, recording all sites on GPS
• determine which pairs were breeding
• tag nestlings and
• take blood smears from a percentage of the birds.

The Hawk Conservancy Trust team of four were; Andrew Hinton, Curator; Jon Scott and Keith Channing, both volunteers at the Trust; and of course yours truly.

African White-backed Vulture in flight

Flying out of Heathrow, the first port of call after check-in was some liquid refreshment as we had a few hours to kill. Our flight would take us to Johannesburg where we were to catch a connecting flight to Kimberley.  When we landed in Johannesburg, the first thing that hit us as we stepped off the plane was the heat, it really smacked you straight in the face and was relentless as we waited for the connecting flight.

The next plane turned out to be a twin engine which looked as if it had flown straight from the set of an old Johnny Weismuller Tarzan film, however it was reliable and we arrived in Kimberley safely! Mark met us at the airport and we then travelled to Dronfield, which is owned by DeBeers and was to be the area covered by the vulture research project and also our base camp for the next 8 days.

Our camp consisted of two brick huts which luckily had toilet facilities and a shower. Hot water was optional and, when required, came from a large tank called the 'donkey'. The 'donkey' was heated by a fire lit at the end of the days' work, however a careful check had to be made every evening prior to lighting, as the camp tortoise tended to crawl in there each night to keep warm.

Day one of our adventure began when we were introduced to the rest of Mark's team; Tania Anderson (Mark's wife), Angus Anthony, Eddie Mcfarlane, Eric Herrmann, Beryl and Fricky. The full team were then divided into three teams. The team duties consisted of:

• climbing
• reading satellite navigation
• driving and spotting new nests.

Each team was given its own sector to work in.

Sadly, Keith had an old eye injury which was aggravated by the heat and dust as we arrived in Africa. Africa's bright light caused him immense pain and unfortunately he missed the initial few days of vulture ringing and, although with a brave face, was in a lot of pain for the remainder of the trip.

Mike climbs a tree (avoiding the 6in. thorns)

I became designated climber in my team of three with Beryl and Fricky, here I point out that the vultures not only nest in trees but also in power pylons so my climbing was going to be varied! Once we had located a nest site the next step was to climb the tree - my job! Easier said than done in a lot of cases, carrying with you a rope and holdall to secure any nestling. Upon reaching the nest, if it contained a vulture (some nests were empty after all that effort of climbing) the nestling was secured within the holdall and lowered gently down to Beryl and Fricky.

The young vulture was then weighed and the wing tag applied. The tags we used this year were attached to the patagial part of the wing and each tag had an identification number on it. This method of identification differed to previous years' tagging which consisted of coloured ring tags attached to the legs. It was found that identification by means of a leg ring had a number of drawbacks; the vultures would often pull them off, they were hard to identify from a distance and also they were no longer being manufactured. So this year wing tags were the preferred option. It is now believed that farmers are more likely to report vultures found on their land, either alive or dead, if they are tagged. 

A real challenge for Mike - a couple of hundred feed up a live electricity pylon!

Once the tags were fitted, Mark and I went back to check on 6 random vultures that had been wing tagged 5 days earlier, to ensure no problems were encountered with the new device. We were looking for any swelling to the bird's wing or that the tag had been pulled off, however all were present and correct with no evidence of adverse effects.

As mentioned earlier, one of the aims of the project was to collect a sample of vulture blood smears; this was to analyse for the presence of haematozoa.  Blood smears were taken from 12 chicks and sent back to the UK to Dr Mike Peirce for analysis. This is the 5th year blood smears have been taken for this purpose and the results give an indication of the health of the vulture population. Historical data has shown that in wetter seasons the level of parasite found within the vulture population increases, this is most likely due to the wetter weather encouraging more activity in the Dipterans which carry the parasite.

Nestling with wing tag

All the teams spent two days searching for new nests, locating missed nests and checking the accuracy of data added into the GPS. Unfortunately during one year of observation the GPS nest site recording became scrambled by the satellite with the result that all co-ordinates and data for that year was rendered useless; the knock on effect for this year meant arriving at a nest site location only to find nothing there. Currently Dronfield is home to around 330 nest trees and it is estimated improvements need to be made to the GPS co-ordinates for about 40 nests.

During our research the total number of vulture chicks rung was 43, however six of these had to be rung at a later date by Mark, Eddie and Eric as they were too small when initially located in their nest. To date, Mark and his team have rung a total of 489 vultures at Dronfield.

From a biological perspective, the project aims to provide evidence for several population questions:

• At what age do the vultures first breed?
• Do vultures show fidelity to the site where they were raised?
• Do breeding pairs show year-to-year fidelity to their immediate breeding area? 
• Are the birds life-long partners?

Everyone involved and all those who become part of the Dronfield project recognise how important and worthwhile this research is, not only from a biological point of view but clearly from a conservation aspect, for this already threatened species. The data captured during this work will detect any fall in breeding success of the population year on year and a critical level of breeding success can be set. For example, should the breeding success rate fall below 40%, clear indication is being given in the field of a decline in the population. 

When monitoring a species' breeding success to this level, any fall will immediately raise awareness and concern, prompting action to avoid an impending population disaster such as seen elsewhere in the world.

If more research projects like that at Dronfield had been undertaken in India & Pakistan, perhaps we would not now be looking at the drastic decline, almost to the point of extinction, of the Oriental White-backed vulture.

Finally, I would just like to say a big thank you to Mark Anderson for the technical data supplied and for all his help and expertise throughout the trip which made it such a wonderful, rewarding experience. And a huge thank you to the Trust for giving me the opportunity to participate and help in such a worthwhile project.