Egyptian vulture | Neophron percnopterus

Voice

Almost always silent; away from the colony and the carcass you will hardly hear it. At the nest and in squabbles over food a hoarse growling, a hissing sseee and a nasal, mewing myaaa; young beg with a harsh, repeated chi-chi-chi. At the nest ledge a soft grunting sometimes passes between the pair, and otherwise there is silence.

Identification

A small, slender vulture, dirty white to cream with black flight feathers: the black-and-white flight pattern is unmistakable, the whole trailing edge of the wing dark. The tail is white and clearly wedge-shaped, with an angled tip, and projects well behind the wing. Head and throat are bare and bright yellow, and the long, bristly hind-neck feathers form a spiky mane. The bill is slender, yellow with a black tip. Soars on flat wings with the hands pushed slightly forward; the wing is narrow for a vulture. Juveniles are almost uniformly dark brown with a greyish face, becoming blotchily paler over four or five years.

Confusion species

The dark juvenile is the problem. A distant small Cinereous Vulture can be confused with it: Cinereous is huge, with far broader, straight wings and a short tail, while the young Egyptian has narrow wings and a long wedge-shaped tail — and the size gives itself away the moment it flies beside a Griffon. Confusion with Black Kite is more real: the kite has a forked or square-cut tail, never a wedge, flies on supple beats and constantly twists its tail, and shows a pale patch at the base of the primaries. The white adult can only be confused with a White Stork, which carries neck and legs outstretched and has a red bill, or with an adult Bearded Vulture, much larger, with long narrow wings and orange underparts without black.

Habitat

Breeds on cliffs and in river canyons, on ledges and in cavities of limestone or sandstone walls, often in modest ravines a Griffon would disdain. Forages over cereal steppe, dehesa, poor pasture and garrigue with extensive livestock, and visits feeding stations, rubbish tips and farmyards faithfully, taking small scraps, afterbirths and insects. It also searches roadsides and dry riverbeds.

Range and movements

Spain is the European stronghold, with 1,490 to 1,567 pairs at the 2018 census: the Ebro valley, the Iberian System, Castile and León, Extremadura, Andalusia and the Pyrenees, plus an island population on Fuerteventura and Lanzarote — the guirre — now over four hundred birds and resident all year. Elsewhere in Europe some 85 pairs remain in France, 67 to 90 in Portugal, 26 in Bulgaria, 13 in Italy and only five in Greece; the Balkan population shrinks year on year. European birds winter in the Sahel, between Mauritania and Chad.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

March to September, in the gorges of the Duratón, the Riaza or the Ebro, and at Monfragüe. Early in the morning pairs are still on the ledges of the cliff and can be watched at leisure; by mid-morning they leave to forage. An active feeding station, a livestock carcass dump, or a mountain pass where migrating raptors concentrate — Tarifa in August and September — offers the best chance.

Conservation status

IUCN: Endangered. It is the only European vulture in that category worldwide. The population collapsed through the twentieth century, and in India the veterinary drug diclofenac wiped out almost the entire population; in Europe the Spanish population is stable but the Balkan one keeps shrinking. Threats are illegal poison, veterinary medicines in livestock carcasses, electrocution and collision on power lines, wind turbines, nest robbery and, on migration and in the African wintering grounds, hunting and trade for belief-based use.