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Egyptian Vultures (1 Viewer)

eddy the eagle

eddy the eagle

Well-known member
Yesterday whilst at Sierra Plata Balonia,Cadiz,I was able to observe a pair of egyptian vultures on a cliff face about one hundred metres distant.The birds had circled the area for a few minutes then landed and almost immediately mated.They remained on the cliff for about 30 minutes during which time I was able to closely view their features.The bare skin on the male was orangy in colour where as they females was of a more lemony colour.I then noticed that each bird had a similar oval bald patch of bare featherless skin on it´s chest about 6 inches long by 3 inches wide tapering at the top and bottom to form the oval.The skin colour matched the face colour of each bird.I have not seen this before.Has anyone any knowledge of this and is it to do with breeding stimulation? Eddy.
 
Egyptian vultures bald chest patch

I will try to attach a photo,the male bird is on the left and you can see the bald orangy patch on it´s chest.The paler yellow patch of the female is just visible. Eddy.
 

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I think that's the bird's crop.
Vulture crops bulge when full ->stretching the overlying skin and giving the appearance of a bare patch. Interesting that the skin here is also yellow; I had always assumed that the yellow enrichment of the bare skin was confined to the head.
 
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Eating Belgium chocolates is like making love to a beautiful woman....

Romantic meal of sheeps offal is like making love to a beautiful female vulture...

Good detective work. Will have to pay attention if find a Vulture 'body clean-up' operation. I haven't seen an Egyptian at work at a corpse to notice this. They are a cool looking Vulture - only second to the 'Lammy'.
 
rosbifs said:
Eating Belgium chocolates is like making love to a beautiful woman....

Romantic meal of sheeps offal is like making love to a beautiful female vulture...

Good detective work. Will have to pay attention if find a Vulture 'body clean-up' operation. I haven't seen an Egyptian at work at a corpse to notice this. They are a cool looking Vulture - only second to the 'Lammy'.
Click to expand...

Is this Swiss Toni or French Rosbifs? :-O
 
Offal in sheep's stomach -sounds more like Haggis than Belgian chocolates but given the recent debacle that is European meat licensing who is to say there isn't a wee touch of mutton DNA in those Belgian chocs! ;)
 
eddy the eagle said:
Yesterday whilst at Sierra Plata Balonia,Cadiz,I was able to observe a pair of egyptian vultures on a cliff face about one hundred metres distant.The birds had circled the area for a few minutes then landed and almost immediately mated.They remained on the cliff for about 30 minutes during which time I was able to closely view their features.The bare skin on the male was orangy in colour where as they females was of a more lemony colour.I then noticed that each bird had a similar oval bald patch of bare featherless skin on it´s chest about 6 inches long by 3 inches wide tapering at the top and bottom to form the oval.The skin colour matched the face colour of each bird.I have not seen this before.Has anyone any knowledge of this and is it to do with breeding stimulation? Eddy.
Click to expand...

Hi Eddy,

Perhaps the attached photograph illustrates the feature (engorged crop) that you observed?

Photo taken by Mital Patel (India).
 

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i live in new delhi, north india. just south of delhi, an ancient, arid range of mountains called the aravalis start. my college is right on the edge. around 4 kms from my college is a municipal waste and carrion dump. there one can see more than 60 egyptian vultures in the wnter along with 20+ greater spotted eagles. the egyptian vultures are mostly the yellow billed indian variety but the migratory nominate(grey billed) can also be seen. numbers reduce around march end.
 
I have moved to Florida from Egypt. Saw a Crested Caracara here with "tumor or deformity" protruding from bottom neck area a little to right of center. Only one book (of many i have) has a photo of this bird with "fully engorged crop," but phenomenon is not mentioned in any of them; same is true of all books on WP raptors, so it was interesting to learn about the Egyptian Vultures. Our surveyed 185,000 migrating raptors and soaring birds (OSME Sandgrouse 35:2 2014) at Ayn Sokhna Red Sea Egypt are hardly eating -- and, are at binocular and scope range.
 
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