LAMMERGEIER More LifeSCAVENGER OF THE SKIES
One of the largest birds in the sky may also be the least aggressive, courtesy of its preferred hunting strategy. The lammergeier — also known as the bearded vulture, thanks to a sort of avian black mustache — may cover several hundred miles in a single day, searching for food. Massive wingspans, as wide as 9 feet (2.7 meters), allow them to glide for long distances on air currents while expending little energy. Their wide, long wings are just right for floating easily on rising thermals.
The scavengers commonly are found in many parts of the world, including Africa, India, Tibet, Central Asia and large swathes of the Middle East. The lofty birds like mountainous areas — even living so high as 25,000 feet (7,620 meters). However they will fly widely (and to lower elevations) to find their prey. One nesting pair may dominate an area of 150 square miles (388 square kilometers), intimidating any other lammergeiers that enter their domain. A female will lay only one or two eggs at a time, which hatch after 50 days or so. The young are ready to fly within three months and to start learning the species' trademark strategy for sustenance.
MEALS OF MARROW (and Bone)
In the Life episode about "Birds", the lammergeiers swoop in to claim a carcass that's already been picked clean by other birds. Why? To get a bone, inside of which is marrow that can be just as precious and life-sustaining as the meat from a fresh kill. In the episode, one of those bones is estimated to be a whopping 8.8 pounds, or 4 kilograms.
Of course, it's not easy to get to the marrow inside a hard bone, so a lammergeier grasps it between his legs, rises up high on thermal currents and then finds a rocky place on which to drop the bone, where it is sure to shatter. The vulture then eats as much of the bone fragments as he wants, not bothering to extract the marrow separately. His body does the rest, as potent stomach acids, which have a pH of roughly 1, dissolve the bone. With this bone-eating strategy, lammergeiers have a powerful tool for getting at nutrients that are unavailable to most animals.
Unfortunately, like many raptors and birds of prey, the lammergeier was hunted heavily, for sport, museum displays and because of the misguided notion that they kill livestock (they don't). But in recent years, the IUCN Red List has classified the bird as "least concern," meaning that it's not considered threatened.
Written by Jacob Silverman, HowStuffWorks
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