How much does Kevin the vulture weigh? Can you tell a vulture feather from a different bird’s? And what exactly can you learn from an owl pellet?
You’ll find out at our annual Vulture Day this Saturday the 5th of September, when our Education Team will be outside the sea lion pool from 10am–4pm with a whole host of hands-on activities to help you discover more about these fascinating birds.
You can test your detective skills with ‘Whose Feather?’, matching feathers to the birds they came from and using pocket microscopes to explore their incredible structure. You can also build a vulture food web, discovering how different parts of an ecosystem are connected and how humans can affect those connections, both positively and negatively.
There’ll be plenty of opportunities to get stuck in, too. Use water pipettes to see how different feathers react to water, have a go with our telemetry equipment to see how we track the movements of our birds, and try lifting some sandbags to guess how much Kevin weighs compared with some of the other species here at the park.
You can also discover how vultures communicate by listening to some of their calls, and if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, take a closer look at what’s on the menu for a barn owl by dissecting owl pellets and identifying the tiny bones left behind by their prey.
We’ll also have a tombola with some fantastic prizes up for grabs, including winning tickets for a special flight experience at our Bird of Prey Flying Displays. There’ll be an opportunity to win a ticket for the 12pm, 2pm or 4pm show, with the experience available to winners aged 16+. All proceeds raised on the day will go towards our Link to the Wild initiative, through which we support the amazing Vulpro.
Vultures might not always get the same attention as some of our more famous animals, but they’re incredibly important. As nature’s clean-up crew, they play a vital role in removing carcasses from the environment and helping to prevent the spread of disease.
So come along and find out why there’s so much more to vultures than meets the eye.