Well, what can you say, except Africa; unless you have been its hard to explain what a truly wonderful place it is. This year , as one of the Trust’s members of staff, I was fortunate to secure a place on the team working with Mark Anderson on the 2005 Vulture ringing project. The rest of the team were: Andrew Hinton, Keith Channing and Jon Scott and we were all looking forward to participating in this exciting experience.

Upon my arrival in Kimberley, we had about a 15 minute drive to the Dronsfiedl estate. As this was my first trip to Africa it was marvellous to be staying out on the Veldt (grass lands) away from the towns and cities. The project involved researching the African White Backed vulture population. The vultures role in all this was to be ringed, affixed with patagial wing tags and in some cases having blood samples taken. The day started early, around 6.30am for those of us living at camp whilst everyone else arrived around 7.45am. Once everyone was assembled we were divided into three teams, with each team consisting of a climber, and two people who were responsible for ringing, tagging, recording birds measurements and verifying the GPS coordinates of the nest sites. Dronfield estate was split into three sectors, one for each group - I was working with local biologist, Beryl and her partner Friki. I was enlisted as the climber; and as we approached the first tree located by the GPS co-ordinates, I’m sure I remembered Andrew saying these trees weren’t very tall, and here it was standing about 30ft. Oh well onwards and upwards ...

lowering the chick carefully

You climb with a line, I’m told. No not a safety line, but a dual purpose line which assists in taking equipment to the top, and allows you to lower the young vulture safely to the rest of the team on the ground for measurement. So, up you go, and through the course of the next few GPS sites discover the favourite nesting sites are a tree known as a Camelthorn (Acacia eroloba for those of you that know your trees). The Camelthorn tree is aptly named, and has really big thorns, especially at the top where the canopy flattens out, typical! Just to try and complicate matters further, most of the nest seem to be slightly off centre and are built out towards the edge of this spiky canopy, which makes reaching them a tad more difficult. Once you have wriggled your way through the canopy the fun begins. You can see the nest, you inch towards it and hope that the vulture chick will chose to display "play possum" behaviour, laying quite still; this is a climbers favourite behaviour.

Unfortunately, not all chicks have checked to see what climbers prefer, and the other less desirable behaviour you experience is a chick defending itself by lunging at you with its beak. This can be tricky, standing 30 ft up a tree, balancing on a branch sometimes no bigger than 1 inch in diameter and trying not to get bitten. What’s a little nip from a chick, I hear you say. These were slightly bigger than normal chicks as they were only a week or two from fledging and weighing up to 6.6 kilos. So being bitten can be really painful. Climber now becomes tightrope walker as you balance, needing both hands to secure the vulture, then placing it into a holdall before tying off your line to a branch and lowering the chick carefully down to your team mates below.

Ringed, tagged and ready to go back to the nest

The young vulture is then weighed, carefully taken out of the holdall and checked all over. A patagial wing tag is then fitted to the birds right wing and a ring attached to the birds left leg. Once this has been accomplished the process is reversed, with the chick being put back into the nest, and the climber returning to the ground more or less unscathed and ready to move on to the next GPS co-ordinate. On the first day of climbing, I retrieved 16 young vultures from nest sites and a total of 37 chicks were rung during the course of the project. Another 6 very young chicks were located in nest sites, however they were deemed too small to be rung and tagged at the time of our visit, so were caught up and rung at a later date.

don't forget the paperwork, Mike

The work studying the Dronfield African Whitebacked vultures population fufills a number of significant factors; it gives an initial indication of the health and breeding success of the population. For example, if the breeding success rate fell to below 40% early warning signs of a problem within the population could be investigated. Breeding success is used as a measure to determine year on year the impact of disease, poisoning, death of mature birds, and other external factors on the overall health and viability of the population. This constant vigilance is vital if we are to react quickly to prevent a similar catastrophe to that which has befallen the Oriental White Back Vulture in South Asia.

and he won't forget the thorns!!

The vulture ringing was only a small part of the work we did out in Africa, if I was to sum it up in four words it would be: exciting, worthwhile, educational, and very tiring. Oh sorry, that’s five, not four.

Finally I would like to say a big thank you to both the Trust for having given me this wonderful opportunity, and to Mark Anderson, the man behind the Dronfield project. His knowledge, generosity in time spent in bringing us all up to speed with the project and his enthusiasm for his work inspired us all. His warm hospitality throughout our stay made my trip to Africa a truly unforgettable experience.