When having a breakfast a snake caused great excitement: Someone saw her next to the horse-arena at VulPro! All together we went to the arena and found a cobra (don't know the species) hiding next to a mound under a tree, maybe one year old, more then a metre long and deadly poisonous!!! 
Subadult snakes don't know who to dose their poison, that's why they use too much poison and are more dangerous then adult snakes. By using a stick the snake got professional captured, was brought to the other side of the farm and released in the grassland.
But actually she looked very trustingly!Next some early-morning exercises, capturing the Lapped-faced Vulture and giving him his eyedrops. This time he was sitting on a perch in a very good position that made it easy for me to capture him. I guess I get used to it! Just got some black and blue bruises at my upper arm when I tried to prevent the vulture from spreading his giant wings. But bruises made by a vulture are much more stylish then bruises when stumbling against a door or a wall... I proudly present my vulturous bruises ;-) Because of his poor eyesight it's not possible to release the Lapped-faced Vulture into the wild. That's why we wanted to get him used to people and do some exercises with him. The first exercise he passed with flying colours, eating straight out of my hand!!!
Every now and then I played with Cape Vulture Cody, who likes to run beside me when I am next to his enclosure. This time he proudly presented me his collection of feathers.
He likes to get little sticks, so I gave him some through the fence while he mischievously watched my dangling lid of my camera lens.
In the next picture you can see the difference between Cape Vultures and White-backed Vultures. Cape Vultures (behind) have blue colours around their eyes, while White-backed Vultures (infront) have a black face. Depending on the incidence of light it's very difficult to distinguish both species.
My next job was extraordinary, taking a double-sized bloated dead sheep to the capture-enclosure at the vulture's restaurant and cut it into pieces. The knives were very blunt and after some unsuccessful attempts to cut the skin I ran a knife utterly fearless into the sheep's potbelly... I'll give you three guesses what happened! Well, fortunately it did not explode but the "fragrance" was breathtaking. When the penetrating smell was gone I managed to cut the skin and present the vultures some tasty insides of the sheep. Next to the opened curtain of the capture-enclosure I put some piglets whose skin colour has changed into green served with the left-overs of the yesterday's cow. Delicious bait to capture some wild vultures for tagging. (I better spare you the pictures of the sheep.)
Unfortunately the weather conditions weren't very good. Too warm but cloudy and little thermals. Too exhausting for vultures to fly. 
Few hours later some vultures were circling in the sky and more then 40 Cape Vultures came down to the vulture's restaurant step-by-step. Unfortunately they did not like the dead sheep. 
For a long time we were sitting at the observation point under a tree next to the vulture's restaurant and waited for the vultures to go inside the capture-enclosure. When they are inside we can pull the end of a long rope at the observation point and close the capture-enclosure with a curtain. But no vulture walked into the trap.
They were satisfied by eating the left-overs of the yesterday's cow. Some vultures even left the restaurant without eating anything. Funny birds. Their crops were empty, they must be very hungry. But sometimes, when there are tempting thermals, vultures feel like flying and take off.
Hopefully they will come back tomorrow and we got the chance to capture some beautiful specimens. The good guys will get tagged, analysed, measured and few minutes later released.
We continued replacing perches in the enclosures. Now just the perches inside the big enclosures are missing.
Oh yeah, late in the morning I helped to clean the five boxes of our mice inside the garage. Sometimes they are used as food for vulture chicks or the Bateleur Eagles.
But how to capture a mouse? YES, catch it by the tail!
Hehe, great fun!!! At the moment I don't like the mice, 'cause early in the morning I saw one eating her baby. Killer-mouse!In few minutes we will go to a restaurant - well, no vulture's restaurant but for people!
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