Carcasses and vultures

15th January 2015 began at Phalodi, and the Demoiselle cranes at Kichan.

It ended rather differently.

"Turn right on the Jeypore highway."
"You have reached your destination."

The electronic GPS lady-with-an-American-accent informed us that we were at our destination - the Jorbeer carcass dumping site.  But we were at the end of a T junction in the middle of nowhere, and quite lost.

We then did our navigation the old-fashioned (and for India the more effective way quite often), rolled down the windows and asked a local trundling along on his bicycle.

We arrived a little too late in the evening, and the sun was already low in the sky.  On the outskirts of Bikaner, we were at this large empty semi-desert acreage, where the city dumps its cattle carcasses.

The air was filled with raptors, as too the ground.

Tractors come and unload the cattle carcasses of the city and the neighbouring towns here.  There are piles of  meat, which are then picked clean by the scavenging birds on duty, increasingly in competition with feral dogs.

The scenery is unattractive, and there is an odour of rotting flesh.  We kept a safe distance from the carcasses, and so we were not overpowered by the stench or the flies.

We kept together, and one of us kept an eye on the dogs, which are aggressive and territorial.


Egyptian vultures, European griffins, Steppe Eagles - all migrants - abound.  We also saw Cinereous vultures.

And flitting in the undergrowth, camouflaged in the brown of the sand were a flock of Isabelline wheatears as well.

Steppe eagles in plenty, as at Taal chapper.

On every shrub, every mound, there seemed to be the Steppe Eagles, as common here, as crows in Madras, it seemed!

A steppe eagle soared by

And the Egyptian vultures sat around, everywehere, roosting communally on top of bushes like this.....

.... circling in the sky, distinctive with their wedge-shaped tails......

...feeding on the carrion, the juvenile blacks and the adult whites.....

....unbothered by the dogs...

Neophron percnopterus - looking like they could do with a good wash to clean themselves!  They are or were seen across the Indian sub continent. 

I read that they feed on feaces to get the carotenoid pigment that gives them those yellow faces, which is a sign of good health.  How gross is that?!

More than the ground, it was the show in the sky that was riveting.

A large Eurasian Griffon came into view, making the Egyptian vultures look small.

 Gyps fulvus - we saw it ride the thermals, gliding effortlessly with its large wing span, its white head and long neck, reminding me of the vultures in Jungle Book.

The rufous brown underwings have a pale banding across.

See the stout bill, and this was probably a juvenile as the bill was greyish.  It looked all grown up and fierce to me though

 These Gyps are also probably affected by diclofenac poisoning, and their numbers are on the decline.

They are probably a resident population, moving to the Himalayas in summer.

See the larger Cinereous

And then came the even larger Cinereous Vulture into view!

Aegypius monachus - this is the largest vulture species, appearing all black in the sky.

They hold their wings quite often in this arched fashion, and have a slow flapping, given their broad wing spans.

And then it was back to the eagles -

Tawny Eagle - with the gape line extending only until the eyes, and not beyond like the "smiling" Steppe eagles.

Another one sat on the ground in the distance.

 A great place for idying vultures is here.

A rib cage picked clean by the scavengers - clear evidence of their role in the natural world.

The light was fast fading, or rather had faded, and the dogs appeared even more menacing, and we decided to leave.

A strange and unattractive place, and I ruminated as we trundled along in the car that I would never have known of this place but for the MNS group.

Across India, there are dumps like this, it seems, where cattle carcasses are dumped after removing their hides.  The fall in vulture populations has caused a serious problem in their disposal.  The diclofenac seems to affect the Gyps vultures more, which could be the reason why the Egyptian vultures seem to be in greater numbers.

Vibhu Prakash of BNHS has documented their decline.

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Some others had gone to the camel research centre nearby, and ofcourse Dhruva had to do the last of his disappearing act as he wandered off to buy camel milk from the National Camel centre!!

Sheila's birthday and Shobha and Vijay's wedding anniversary - what an eventful day!  Forgotten havelis at Phalodi, Demoiselle cranes by the thousands at Kichan, mustard fields and khejri trees, vultures and a carcass dump, a bone-rattling drive to Sujangarh, and finally dinner at Rich Garden Sujangarh, which had no garden to speak of!

The next morning, it was another eventful day as we headed to Taal Chapper.