Edition 43: Summer 2008

In his new Gone Birding columns, Duncan Butchart singles out some of the continent’s most charismatic and enticing birds and tells you where to find them. In this edition he turns his trained eye to the bearded vulture.

Of the world’s 24 vulture species, this is arguably the most impressive and visually appealing, whether perched or in flight. With its long pointed wings and diamond-shaped tail, the bearded vulture is a bird designed for the high mountains. It has a wide but fractured distribution in Africa, including the Drakensberg, Rift Valley, Ethiopian Highlands and Atlas Mountains. Nowhere abundant, territorial pairs live out their lives in vast home ranges, gliding effortlessly on mountain updrafts in search of food.

Often known as the ‘Lammergeier’, there are no plausible instances of these birds preying upon the lambs that this Germanic name implies, so conservationists prefer the name ‘bearded vulture’, which at least removes the accusatory label given to them by gun-toting stock farmers. Remarkably for such a supreme flyer, the bearded vulture is actually a bone specialist. When arriving at a source of carrion, which may also be attended to by crows and other vultures, the bearded vulture will often choose a large bone and depart the scene. Flying off to a favoured site, the big bird will then drop the bone onto a rocky shelf from some height. After one or two attempts, the bone will finally shatter into fragments – bite-sized morsels that the vulture will then spiral down to eat. Alternatively, the vulture may tug and pull at a carcass for an hour or so until it can extricate a meal – with its extraordinarily wide gape, the bearded vulture is able to swallow bones up to 25cm long and 3cm wide. Its highly acidic digestive juices are even able to break down these large pieces.

The vulture’s ‘beard’ of feathers below the bill may have a tactile function: to prevent the vulture from getting its head trapped inside bone cavities while trying to extract its nectar of choice, the marrow.

Adults are usually seen singly or in pairs, and typically perform an eagle-like courtship flight at the onset of the breeding season. Their large nests, constructed of twigs and lined with wool, fur and skin, are typically situated in a sheltered rock crevice on a cliff face. The nest’s precarious position renders them inaccessible to mammalian predators such as baboon. Although two eggs are usually laid, it is normal for just one nestling to survive – the first hatched invariably out competes its sibling.

Five places to see a bearded vulture
1. Giant’s Castle, Drakensberg, South Africa
A superb viewing hide is situated on the edge of a cliff, where meat and bones are laid out by reserve staff to attract scavenging birds. Excellent photographic opportunities exist here, but the hide (which is open only from June to September) must be booked by telephone several months in advance. Contact: Giant’s Castle +27 36 353-3718 from 1st November each year.

2. Simien Mountains, Ethiopia
The Ethiopian highlands support the greatest number of bearded vultures, with as many as 2000 pairs. They often soar so low over trekkers’ tent sites on the edge of Simien escarpments that you can hear the wind flowing over their wings – as enchanting as it is impressive.

3. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
Mountaineers should keep an eye open for these spectacular specialist scavengers while making their way up the summit trails. Sightings are rare as there are fewer than 100 pairs occurring in both Tanzania and Kenya

4. High Atlas, Morocco
These mountains offer only a small chance of seeing the nominate Palearctic race, as fewer than 100 pairs survive in all of North Africa.

5. Drakensberg Highlands, Lesotho
Bearded vultures are widespread in the cold and sparsely populated highlands, and might be encountered while hiking or pony trekking. There are some 200 surviving pairs in the Drakensberg of Lesotho and South Africa.

Conservation status
The bearded vulture has been mistakenly persecuted by South African stock farmers for decades and has vanished from much of its former range. Thankfully public relations efforts by the Endangered Wildlife Trust and others have made a difference in recent years. Conservation tools include educational work with farmers, the provision of uncontaminated food in the form of bones at ‘vulture restaurants’, and captive breeding programmes aimed at repopulating former ranges.