TomKal foto

Somewhere in Mongolia, in mountainous terrain, we were looking for rock thrushes. Above our heads from time to time representatives of raptors appeared: a bearded vulture, cinereous vulture, griffon vulture, steppe eagle, golden eagle. I chose a place, organized a bait site and decided to sit down under small trees in a camouflage tent an hour before the dawn. Magpies and a raven appeared first, and sometimes at the bait site there were 6 black kites. A cinereous vulture appeared twice but it did not decide to have a meal and flew away. At about 10 o’clock our guide arrived and scared away all the birds which had appeared so far. I thought that he’d better had an important reason. And he had one. During the night in our farmer’s herd a foal dropped dead. According to Mongolian tradition the carcass must be removed from the close vicinity of the yurt, as it is hard to talk about a farm, as in Mongolia there are no fences or clearly separated territories belonging to one nomad. Everyone receives 0.7 ha from the government, grazing animals is unlimited and each man grazes their herd (an average herd can number a thousand – horses, yaks, camels, goats or sheep) where they want to. Foreigners don’t have the right to buy land. Each year there are many such incidents like the one that affected our host that night, among 55 million animals grazed freely in Mongolia. This is also the reason why there are so large populations of cinereous vultures, griffon vultures, steppe eagles and black kites. It was confirmed already within an hour from the moment we moved away from the car. Suddenly 6 vultures appeared. Initially I thought that four of them were griffon vultures and two of them cinereous vultures. However two griffon vultures, which were much more aggressive than the rest of birds, appeared to be Himalayan vultures. One of them, although it was a cripple (without one leg), once it scared away all the rest of birds, sat down to eat vigorously. An amazing, strong bird tearing the foal’s skin apart. It swallowed quite large pieces of meat and skin. When it satisfied its hunger, it flew away immediately, and its place was taken by griffon vultures.

Link to the slide show - Vultures - click here