Vultures are drawn to ‘the dead’. This one was drawn to the living. Captive-bred and released in the wild, this White rumped vulture consistently displayed a tendency to be within earshot of smartphone-carrying primates. It had taken into its bald head that humans are providers of food. The idea was likely seeded in there when the bird had a brief stay at Kalaburagi Zoological Park in Karnataka, and nurtured in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve where it had the fortune, nay, misfortune of finding human feeders from time to time.

This female vulture was being spied upon. Radio-tagged, the bird had its movements tracked in real time. Records of its peregrinations at the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve were showing up on screens at the Bombay Natural History Society’s (BNHS) establishment at Tadoba-Andhari in Maharashtra. From radio telemetry data gathered by BNHS, it was evident the vulture was not fit for the wild, and the BNHS team was considering relocating the bird to a breeding centre where it could be used for breeding. Before the conservationists could act on that decision, the vulture met with a tragic end, being electrocuted at a power transmission line in the Nilgiris in Mudumali. If that plan had fructified, the bird would have come full circle, as it had been captive-bred at Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre in Pinjore Haryana, run by the Haryana Forest Department along with Bombay Naturalist History Society (BNHS). Radio telemetry almost saved the bird.

Jonathan D’Costa, conservation biologist at BNHS, points out this bird (Z25, its radio-tagged identity) was one of five White rumped vultures to be radio-tagged at Tadoba on December 22, 2025 . The carrion-devouring quintet were released at the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve on December 30.

Jonathan gives a blow-by-blow account of how this vulture ended up among the dead prematurely: “After their release, the five White rumped vultures were monitored. And Z25 in particular was observed to have not stuck around much in Tadoba-Andheri Tiger Reserve. In a week or two, it flew out of the reserve and kept going south, eventually reaching Kalaburagi city in Karnataka.”

Karnataka Forest Department personnel captured the bird and kept it at the Kalaburagi Zoological Park and following consultations with their counterparts in Tamil Nadu, it was decided the vulture would go to Mudumalai Tiger Reserve where a White rumped vulture population existed. Amidst familiar plumage, Z25 had a reasonably good chance of getting acclimatised to the wild. But radio telemetry data showed the bird was slipping out of the wild; and this maverick behaviour was regularly observed on the field. BNHS was sending the data to the Tamil Nadu Forest Department and Arulagam, an NGO engaged in vulture conservation efforts. S. Bharathidasan, secretary of Arulagam, notes the data would be sent to his mobile.

“Human interaction and feeding being imprinted on its mind, this vulture would not join the other White rumped vultures in Mudumalai. It had become habituated to human feeding. Four to five times it was captured and released back into the wild. After two days, it would return to patches with heavy human footprints,” says Bharathidasan.

Radio telemetry is a potent tool to study the movements of critically endangered bird species and “herd” straying individual birds into safe zones. And where vultures are concerned, Jonathan notes, the data about their movements would enable conservationists to place carrion at the right place, of course without the act being caught by the beneficiary-birds.

While vultures are raised in a captive setting, Jonathan observes, extreme care is taken to ensure these birds do not associate feeding with humans. A curtain is placed to effectively hide from the birds the fact that they are being fed by humans. Jonathan feels while at the Kalaburagi Zoological Park, the vulture would have latched on to the notion that humans are their keepers, providers.

This fatal flaw in the vulture was noticed thanks to radio telemetry, and the data did help protect the bird till it ran into that power transmission line.