From: itannman@dogbert.ucdavis.edu (Ann Mansker)
Subject: Critter of the Week: Gypaetus barbatus
Date: 31 Aug 1998 00:00:00 GMT
Newsgroups: ucd.life

The Lammergeier is a vulture of the high mountains in Europe and Asia. Also
known as the Bearded Vulture, it is a handsome bird with a 9 to 10 foot
wingspan.  Aside from its beak, lammergeiers look more like eagles or
falcons than vultures, with narrower wings, a feathered head and a
wedge-shaped tail.  Other vultures do not carry food with their feet, but a
lammergeier must, due to its unique feeding strategy.

All vultures are scavengers, and the lammergeier is no exception; indeed, it
takes scavenging a step further than any other carrion bird.  Food can be
scarce where these birds live -- they range between 3,000 and 20,000 feet in
altitude.  One rich source of nutrition that no other bird can utilize is
bone and bone marrow.  Lacking the crushing jaws of hyenas, lammergeiers
pick up bones as large as a goat's femur and drop them on flat rocks from
heights of over 100 feet.  The bird watches attentively as the bone falls
and hits.  If the bone remains intact, the lammergeier swoops down and
snatches it up for another try.  Eventually, the bone shatters, and the
lammergeier lands to collect and swallow the fragments.  Though they will
eat more conventional fare (they are rumored to break tortoises by the same
method), bones make up a large portion of their diet.

Lammergeiers have fascinated people for thousands of years; the Greeks
believed that the bird that daily ate the liver of Prometheus was a
lammergeier.  The first known description of their feeding behavior was
recorded in Roman times by Pliny.  He attributed the playwright Aeschylus'
death to a lammergeier that mistook the man's bald head for a suitable
breaking rock.

The lammergeier lives in such difficult terrain that it was not photographed
in the wild until 1958.  This image is poor, but the best that I could find:
http://www.parks-sa.co.za/goldengate/images/Goldengate05.GIF