including many sheep and goat carcasses and placenta, as well as largely road-killed hares, springhares, springboks and steenboks. Despite being often recorded at carrion, the numerous scavengers in their range, largely vultures, jackals and occasionally hyenas, are larger and often aggressive towards other scavengers. Therefore, the jackal buzzard either only comes to carrion when other scavengers are done feasting or are entirely absent. They have an advantage in being less shy towards humans than larger birds of prey and scavengers and may be able to come to road-kills more quickly and may also gain an advantage in accessing large carcasses that they may not be able to penetrate without larger scavengers opening them up first. Larger and/or more dangerous live prey recorded to be taken by jackal buzzards has included adults of birds such as francolins and marsh owls, adult puff adders, adult greater cane rats and largely or exclusively the young of various mongoose, monitor lizards and Cape hyraxes. References Ferguson-Lees, Christie, Franklin, Mead and Burton Raptors of the World Ian Sinclair, Phil Hockey and Warwick Tarboton, SASOL Birds of Southern Africa (Struik 2002) External links Jackal Buzzard - Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds jackal buzzard Birds of prey of Sub-Saharan Africa Birds of Southern Africa Fauna of South Africa Endemic fauna of South Africa jackal buzzard jackal buzzard