Vultures and their veils…
Vultures, the gore in their subsistence often veils the nobility of their purpose and the mostly dire circumstances they face in this tumultuous phase of the Anthropocene… diclofenac brought that into the limelight for a while (a problem that is now manifesting in other forms), but that’s only for the woke, one reckons, while wondering how apt it’d be to conflate the issue for the masses through religion in the land of Jatayu (there is conservation breeding centre in Haryana that brands itself thus)… but then there’s this trending lore of those partaking in dead bovines deserving of their fate these days, hence best to let the thought fade away as one segues into mulling over why vultures aren’t celebrated more in death metal; they’d be such a perfect subject for George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher to let his poetry flow… dealing death to the disposers of death, only humans can be so nonchalantly callous…
Orchha is known more for the critically endangered Indian vulture and white-rumped vulture, but they mostly occupy history, nesting in old cenotaphs and temples which we didn’t have much time to explore and were ruing the fact, so ’twas rather heartening to see an Egyptian vulture waiting for us on the outskirts of town as we went around looking for avifauna, unable to cross the Betwa overflowing above the barrage and go into the nearby wildlife sanctuary as originally intended…
Unlike other vultures, the Egyptian vulture broods rather brightly, the yellows and whites making for a striking pose… what it lacks in size as compared to the rest of its brethren it makes up in colour, one muses… ’tis also known to use tools that not many birds do so the intelligence quotient is decent too… geek among footballers maybe?… this one, like us, seemed uneasy on a rather sultry afternoon, disinclined to lift off the ground and ride the thermals… but then, tired of all the attention from us, it took of rather reluctantly, seeking carrion, or an easy prey maybe…
Musing on an Egyptian vulture, Orchha, Madhya Pradesh, India