White-backed vulture (Witrugaasvoël)

Scientific name: Gyps africanus

The white-backed vulture is a typical vulture, with only down feathers on the head and neck, very broad wings and short tail feathers. It has a white neck ruff. The adult’s whitish back contrasts with the otherwise dark plumage. Juveniles are largely dark.
In southern Africa it is locally common across the northern half of the region, extending into the savanna and grassland of South Africa. It generally prefers arid savanna with scattered trees, such as Mopane (Colosphermum mopane), largely avoiding forests, deserts, treeless grassland and shrubland.
It is mainly eats carrion, searching aerially until it spots a carcass, or alternatively following mammalian carnivores and other scavenging birds to the carcass. Once on the scene, it is extremely aggressive to the other feeding animals, pushing them out of the way and outstretching its neck and wings in a threat display, so that it can access the meat. It is generally a subordinate to larger vultures, in fact in the feeding frenzy it sometimes become stuck in the carcass and is eaten by the other scavengers! It rarely hunts and kills its own prey.