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How to fold an origami vulture

A deep body cut round and tipped up to hunch the shoulders. A white fan folded three times and cut once opens into a spiky ruff, and a tapered pleat droops the long pink neck into a hooked head.

You need: A brown 15 cm square, white on the back; dark brown 11 × 5 cm; a white 6 cm square; a pink scrap 6 × 2.5 cm; a brown strip; scissors, glue, pen. Hard, 19 steps, about 40 minutes.

Steps

  1. Fold in half. Brown square, white side up, turned like a diamond. Fold the top corner down to the bottom corner. The long fold on top is the back.
  2. Cut the body. Cut off the right corner in a big round curve from 4 cm right of the middle, down round a deep belly. Cut the left corner off square for the tail.
  3. Hunch it up. Tip the body up so the right end rises high: the hunched shoulders, with the tail hanging down at the bottom left.
  4. Wing: new sheet. Set the body aside. Cut the dark brown piece into a long wing, round at the shoulder and pointed at the tail end.
  5. Ruff: new sheet. Set the wing aside. Cut a half circle 6 cm across from the white square. Its corner in the middle of the straight edge is the fan's point.
  6. Fold in half. Fold the half circle in half from its point, the bottom half up onto the top half.
  7. In half again. Fold it in half again from the point, the edges over onto the first fold.
  8. And again. Fold it in half once more the same way, to a thin wedge. Crease hard.
  9. Cut the ruff. Cut from 1.6 cm up each side of the wedge to one point in the middle of the curved end.
  10. Open it out. Unfold the last fold.
  11. Open again. Unfold the next fold.
  12. Open flat. Unfold the last fold too: a fluffy ruff of eight white spikes round the point.
  13. Neck: new sheet. Set the ruff aside. Cut the pink piece 5.4 cm long, 1 cm wide at the left end and 2.2 cm at the right. Pink side up.
  14. Fold the neck. Fold it in half lengthwise, the bottom edge up behind onto the top edge, so it is pink on both sides.
  15. Cut the beak. Cut the top corner of the right end off on a long slant, and snip the bottom corner, to leave a beak pointing down.
  16. Pleat: fold in. 2.3 cm from the beak, fold the head back to the left on a slanted line from the top edge.
  17. Pleat: fold out. Fold it back from the same top point, on a line that slants more. The head now droops down, the beak hooked under.
  18. Branch: new sheet. Set the neck aside. Take a brown strip 13.5 × 0.9 cm for the branch.
  19. Glue it together. Glue the body on the branch and the wing on its side. Glue the ruff's point at the front of the shoulders and the neck's end over it.

Patient vulture

Colour the hooked beak tip black and draw a small eye on the pink head. Draw dark toes gripping the branch.

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