4th September International Vulture Awareness Day

International Vulture Awareness Day shines a spotlight on the highly important yet vastly misunderstood birds – vultures.

Often misunderstood, vultures are the silent sentinels of our natural world. These remarkable creatures are nature’s cleaners, ecosystem guardians, flying giants, and devoted parents.

These remarkable birds play a vital role in maintaining sustainable and healthy ecosystems. By efficiently consuming carcasses and organic waste, vultures likely prevent the spread of deadly diseases that could devastate wildlife, livestock, and even people.

Vultures are facing a global crisis – they need our help to make a recovery. Vulture populations worldwide are experiencing catastrophic declines due to various threats, including direct and indirect poisoning, illegal killing, and electrocutions or collisions with power lines. 

Vultures are birds of prey who scavenge on carrion (the flesh of decaying animals carrion).There are Old World vultures which are native to  Africa, Asia and Europe. Then there are New World vultures that are native to North and South America. There are no vultures in Australia or Antarctica.

A particular characteristic of many vultures is a bald, unfeathered head. This bare skin is thought to keep the head clean when feeding.

Vultures have three collective nouns allocated to them. A group of vultures in flight is called a "kettle", while the term "committee" refers to a group of vultures resting on the ground or in trees. A group of vultures that are feeding is termed a "wake".

There are not a lot of picture books about vultures, but my young students get interested in vultures because of these two books which feature a vulture.

The library has these stories:

• Vulture View  by April Pulley Sayre and Steve Jenkins

Turkey vultures are best known for being nature’s clean-up crew, but did you know they’re among the most graceful soaring birds on earth? Come spend a day in the life of a vulture and learn how they fly on thermals of warmed air, preen their feathers to stay squeaky clean, keep up their scavenger diet—and so much more. 

• The Sulky Vulture  by Sally Grindley and Michael Terry

Boris is a very sulky vulture - nothing ever goes quite right for him! When his friends try to take his mind off things and cheer him up, everything goes wrong: the swing he is swinging on breaks, he can't find the zebra in hide and seek, he ends up with a rhino chasing him when he plays catch. Even when mum offers him a hug he's still not happy. Some vultures are never pleased!

• Condor's Egg  by Jonathan London and James Chaffee

The story of a family of California Condors and their struggle to survive while their habitat is being destroyed, told in a carefully researched text accompanied by information on helping preserve the Condor. Condor is the common name for  two species of New World vultures.

Your library might also have :

• Vultures, a Love Story  by Karen Schaufeld and Kurt Schwarz

Little Igor, a vulture, was born with a limp and an unusual feather sticking up from his otherwise bald head. This tale is about appreciating our differences and our skills, and recognizing that we all deserve love.

There are some information books with good photographs:

5th September Vulture Awareness Day

The first Saturday in September is International Vulture Awareness Day. I'm sure that most of us give very little thought to vultures, except to think that they are big and unattractive, but their number in the wild is dwindling and thus many countries organise events to raise awareness of their plight.


As a subject of interest, vultures are quite high on the list in my library, especially with Year 2 boys after we have done animals of the African savannah and they learn about scavengers. Suddenly vultures, hyenas and jackals are in demand and we do not have a lot of books on any of these. I purchased some of the Sandra Markle  Animal Scavengers series which has proved popular despite the amount of text, possibly because of the 'bloody' photographs.

While vultures appear as characters in many picture books, especially those set in Africa, the two books where they are the 'stars' are The Sulky Vulture by Sally Grindley, illustrated by Michael Terry, and Vulture View by April Pulley Sayre with wonderful illustrations by Steve Jenkins.