Waterhole and Wildlife - Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, Zimbabwe

Welcome to the waterhole at Victoria Falls Safari Lodge in Zimbabwe, looking out over the bush on the edge of Zambezi National Park. The camera covers an open patch of ground and a pan of water below the lodge, with no fence between it and the park, so the animals that appear here have walked in off their own land. Elephants, buffalo, kudu and warthog come down to drink through the day, and baboons and impala pass through in between.

At one o'clock each afternoon, local time, something quite different happens. The lodge puts out meat scraps and bones from its kitchens, and the ground fills with vultures. White-backed, hooded, lappet-faced and white-headed vultures drop in together, along with marabou storks, tawny eagles and yellow-billed kites, and hyenas often turn up afterwards for the bones. Zimbabwe runs two hours ahead of UTC, so the feeding falls at 11:00 UTC, which is late morning in Britain and early morning on the American east coast. Either side of that, expect the slower rhythm of a waterhole.

This is not a spectacle laid on for guests, or not only that. African vultures are among the fastest declining birds anywhere, hit by poisoning, collisions with power lines and the trade in body parts, and the lodge has been running this supplementary feeding for more than twenty years alongside the Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust, which uses it to monitor numbers in the area. Viewing is free, with donations going to the trust.

Did You Know? A vulture can eat something that would kill almost anything else. Their stomach acid is powerful enough to destroy anthrax, rabies and botulism in a carcass rather than pass it on, which means a colony like this one is doing the work of a disease control programme. Where vultures have disappeared, rotting carcasses stay in the landscape longer and feral dogs and rats move in to replace them, and the diseases spread rather than stop.

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