Mpala Research Centre

Vulturine guineafowl warming up in the morning sun, alongside the highly endangered Grevy’s zebra. Vulturine guineafowl are very sensitive to cold temperatures—their bald heads have evolved to allow them to dissipate heat during the day, so that they can feed in the open sunny areas where the majority of their food is. However, on cold mornings they seek the sun to warm up and start feeding.

Vulturine guineafowl are highly social. Groups are large (15-65, even up to over 90 individuals) and very cohesive. They can survive the predator rich landscape by sticking together, benefiting from safety in numbers. But being social also raises new challenges—groups must reach consensus about where to move, and individuals must manage many different types of relationships within their social group.

Vulturine guineafowl spend the morning foraging on open grassy areas, called glades, where large ungulates (such as these plains zebras) spend the night as a means of avoiding predators. Because large ungulates defecate and urinate all night long in these areas, they aggregate nutrients from the landscape, making them rich in food for the vulturine guineafowl.

The vulturine guineafowl project has pioneered the large-scale deployment of solar-powered GPS tags (here shown on the back of each bird) for fine-scale tracking of movements by individuals and their groups. These tags collect data every 5 minutes, and often every second, of the day. This has generated an unprecedented depth of data within one contiguous population.

Alongside automated data being collected from GPS, the project team also collect observation data. Here a habituated group is being followed on foot, and the interactions between group members are being recorded.

The vulturine guineafowl project is based on the Mpala Ranch, a large research conservancy in central Kenya. This landscape contains dry scrubland that is intersected by large rivers running from the high surrounding mountains.

The Mpala Ranch overlooks the Laikipia Plateau, a high elevation area (over 1800 m altitude!) at the foot of Mt Kenya—Africa’s second highest peak (reaching 5,199 m altitude). The landscape is arid and semi-arid, and the vulturine guineafowl are specialised on the red, sandy soils in this area.

The vulturine guineafowl’s base is at the Mpala Research Center. This is Africa’s leading ecological research station, and hosts a number of research groups working on the local fauna and flora. A striking feature of the research center is the dining hall that overlooks the Laikipia Plateau and Mt Kenya.