Bone Appetit

Natural History, Oct, 2000 by Judy Rice

In the popular imagination, drawing the attention, much less the fixed stare, of a vulture is disconcerting. While the sight of an eagle swooping down for a kill evokes a kind of predatory majesty, a circling scavenger signals imminent rot. Vultures, however, are a varied tribe and have developed specialties in their role as carcass feeders.

The bearded vulture (so called for the bristles sprouting from its "chin"), also known as the lammergeier (or lamb vulture, though it does not kill newborn livestock), is a large bird of eagle-elegance that soars above Eurasian mountain ranges. Its apt Spanish name--quebrantahuesos, or "bone breaker"--refers to its habit of carrying large bones aloft, dropping them on flat rocks, and then extracting the marrow and devouring the shards. Uneaten remnants pile up in extensive bone beds. Bearded vultures pick at dry carcasses and often wait until time and other vultures have exposed a dead animal's skeleton before beginning their feast of bones. Photographer John Cancalosi waited for days in a blind in the Spanish Pyrenees until this bearded vulture, displaying a ruddy head and ruff, landed at the remains of a domestic sheep. The natural color of the plumage on a mature bearded vulture's head and belly is pale, but these birds have an innate propensity to seek out and deliberately apply orange hue to themselves by rubbing in iron-oxide-rich dust and mud. Vulture researcher Antonio Margalida and colleagues speculate that the coloring, which intensifies the birds' red eye rings, is a cosmetic symbol of status. In a stare-down between bearded vultures, the bird with the best rouge wins.