What makes this bird so special? It’s big - very big. With a 3-metre wingspan, it’s an awesome sight. Despite its size, it’s a supreme flyer and incredibly agile in the air. It will typically cover six or seven hundred kilometres in a day. If you’re lucky, while walking at Giant’s Castle, it will sometimes glide in and keep you company for a bit. Humans need not fear it, although there is a biblical reference to a Bearded Vulture killing the Greek poet Aeschylus by dropping a tortoise on his bald head!
Secondly, the Lammergeier’s feeding habits are unlike those of any other bird. Mainly, it feeds on bones and bone marrow. And it’s got a unique technique. It picks up a bone in its claws and drops it from about 40 metres onto a suitable rock to fragment the bone and expose the marrow. It will swallow chunks of meat and it also eats small animals like rabbits or small buck that it catches, and drops. Nice.
The “vulture restaurant” at Giant’s Castle in the Central 'Berg is open to the public. But it’s so popular with birding clubs and ornithological researchers that you’ve got to book at least a year in advance. So for you and I, I’m afraid, the only way to see a Bearded Vulture is to get your walking shoes on and find your own.
They do exist (sparsely) in other parts of the world: Morocco, the Pyrennes, Asia Minor and the Himalayas. But in southern Africa, this is the only place you’re going to find them.
