White-Headed Vulture

I had never heard of a white-headed vulture until William, our guide, announced that one was standing on the road in front of us as we drove down the hill from the Savannah Lodge in Kidepo Valley NP in Uganda, Africa. He mentioned that it was very rare. "Vulture" caught my attention, "very rare" dialed it up several notches. 

It then took flight, none of my photos of the flight were worth keeping, and landed in the top of a tree near the dirt road. 

It is almost cartoonish, like a clown in a child's coloring book or a bad makeup job on the Joker in a Batman movie. 

Another day, we were driving to a village outside the park and saw another one standing in the top of a tree. 

It has an angular head, a high neck ruff, a pink beak, a white crest that looks like a butch haircut, and the featherless areas on its head are pale - light blue and pink on the two I saw. The feathers on its lower parts and legs are white. It is otherwise black (or dark brown) and white. 

An illustration of the white-headed vulture from Birds of the World. 

The population has plummeted. It was of no concern until 2007 when it was listed as Vulnerable and in 2015 it was listed as Critically Endangered. In 2015 it was estimated that there are 5,500 of them and the vast majority of them are in national parks. The problems are reductions in the mammals it eats, alterations in habitat - it is particularly sensitive to human disturbance, poisoning in baits set for other animals and secondary poisoning from the pesticide carbuforan. 

Range map of the white-headed vulture from Birds of the World. 

Vultures were one of the highlights of our trip to Uganda and the white-headed vulture was a big part of that excitement.