Bearded Vulture

Other names
Lammergeier

Description
Huge and long-winged. In strong light, when upperparts look pale and merge with mountainside, often best spotted by dark shadowing moving over the ground.

Adult: underbelly light, whitish with a varying degree of buffish-yellow or often rather deep rufous-buff tinge (acquired through sand-bathing!), contrasting with its dark underwing. In good light, lesser and median under-wing-coverts are darkest, being jet-black. Upperparts are lead-grey with pale feather shafts.

Females are larger than males.

Juvenile: Body is dull grey with contrasting dark grey head, neck and upper breast (like that of a Hooded Crow). Upperparts are not uniformly dark with lighter shafts (as on the adult birds) but are variegated; mantle, rump and some wing-coverts light.

Immature: Adult pattern is attained in about five years, subadults keeping the dark head rather long.

Diet
It can eat parts of the carcass that other birds cannot digest, including bones, which it smashes by dropping them onto rocks from the air. The food it always scavenges always contains bones and it will discard the flesh, preferring to extract the marrow. It also drops live tortoises on rocks.

Calls
Usually silent; but during aerial displays at breeding sites, utters shrill, loud whistling notes or a trill.

Reproduction
Its nest is a platform of twigs with central hollow lined with grass, hair, skin, and bones, in a cave or on a cliff ledge.

Distribution/habitat
Mountainous areas and high steppes between 3,300-14,500 ft (1,000-4,500m). Nonmigrant.