Tim writes: Also known as the Bearded Vulture, the Lammergeier is the only animal on the planet known to feed almost exclusively on bones. It has an extremely acidic stomach (with a pH of around 1) that can dissolve bones and the high fat content marrow inside. Even the young nestlings are fed on small bones. Larger bones too big to swallow are dropped from a height onto rocks so that they break and it was this habit that led to yet another name of Ossifrage (bone breaker). The world population is low and declining, which has led to their IUCN classification as near-threatened. They are also massive, with a wingspan up to 2.8 metres. The main world distribution is in the Himalayas and Caucasus with small populations in the mountains of Europe. But there is also an isolated population in Ethiopia, where I photographed this individual at close range.
Taken with a Nikon D500 and a 300mm f4 lens with a 1.4x converter. 1/8000 second f5.6 ISO 1250 (10 February 2017)
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Maybe the serial disliker thinks the exposure is incorrect?.
Stupendous bird, had brief but fairly close views in Georgia nearly twenty years ago, visited an old fur trapper who occasionally caught them at his baits.
The house we stayed in had a balcony where we slept due to the heat, a Lammergeier skin was on the wall above us, you don’t get that in any but the best hotels.
One of these birds stayed in Devon last spring for a while.
Some thought it was a escapee and had come from Belgium.
Would probably never been recorded but I think a hiker on something like a moor took a photo on his mobile of it and put it on the internet hoping someone would identify it.
It went almost exactly where we had stayed just a couple of days before,what a miss.