HawkTalk Issue 92 Winter 2022

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HAWKTALK WINTER 2022 ISSUE 92

What do you find most challenging about fieldwork? How long it takes to get from point A to point B. But elephants have sabotaged fieldwork more than anything else. You can spend two hours driving somewhere and then another two hours walking to a particular spot, and more than once I’ve found a breeding herd of elephants camped out there! And you can’t get where you’re going because they’re not going anywhere. So you have to turn around and go four hours back again! That’s frustrating. It is rewarding most of the time, but sometimes you come back from a long day with nothing to show for it. For example, when our Hooded Vulture project started, it took ages to find nests. Ages and ages and ages. We’d spend all day trudging through the river, walking through soft sand looking up at these really tall trees so you get a really stiff neck. And working along rivers is dangerous; there’s always the risk of a buffalo, hippo or elephant around the corner. And then not finding any nests at the same time is just really hard. But we got there in the end! What would you say your greatest achievements are in the field? Having been part of the vulture scene in Africa for a long time and contributing to the knowledge of White-headed Vultures – a species we didn’t know much about. So having a better understanding of that bird. I like being known as the White-headed Vulture guy, that’s pretty cool. They’re a fantastic species. They’re a bit hard to find, like a ghost. Not many people had done anything on these birds, so I think that’s a big achievement. How do you think we make a difference? It’s a combination of the research work to understand the birds, and implementing that research work to provide conservation solutions. Then measuring the outcomes to see whether what we’re doing is working. Without question we make a difference, even though we are a small organisation. There’s the work I’ve just been explaining in the field, but there’s also the work here at the Trust where we make a difference. For our size we punch well above our weight. So what’s next? On the research side of things, publishing our findings on White-headed Vultures, and the new project we’re starting on Lappet-faced Vultures. We’re also finishing off the Hooded Vulture project, which is a big job because the fieldwork is actually the simplest part of that project - the analytical side of things comes next, which will be really time-consuming. My fieldwork is probably going to start winding down, just because I’m getting too old for it really. It’s a young person’s game – running around in the bush. And it’s young people from southern Africa that should be doing this work rather than people from over here.

Hooded Vulture chick