Gyps himalayensis

The Himalayan Vulture is a large bird of prey with no subspecies.

The Himalayan Vulture is a resident bird. It often soars at an altitude of 6,000 meters, spends a long time in the air searching for animal carcasses or debris, and then lands to tear them apart after finding them. It is one of the highest flying birds in the world, able to fly over Mount Everest, with a maximum flight altitude of more than 9,000 meters.

It mainly feeds on carrion and corpses, and generally does not attack live animals. It has extremely sharp vision and often hovers in the sky to look for corpses on the ground. It is highly competitive when feeding, and sometimes attacks each other for food. When food is scarce or extremely hungry, it sometimes eats frogs, lizards, birds, small mammals, and large beetles and locusts.

As the Alpine Vulture rarely preys on live animals, its claws are obviously degenerated, but it has a well-developed foot pad under its toes, which is conducive to its running and jumping on the ground. In order to tear carrion or drag out heavy internal organs from the carcasses of some large animals, the Alpine Vulture's beak has evolved to be extremely powerful. In addition, in order to adapt to feeding on corpses, especially to extend the head and neck into the animal's body cavity to feed on internal organs or carrion, the feathers on its head and neck are specialized into short down feathers. After being stained and hardened during feeding, they are restored to a fluffy state through friction with soil, rocks, grass stems, shrubs, etc., and continue to play an effective role in keeping warm. A circle of longer feathers growing at the base of the neck constitutes a collar, which, like a napkin used by people when eating, prevents the feathers on the body from being soiled. Due to its large body size and wide wings, it is very suitable for saving energy during long-term and long-distance soaring flights, which is very beneficial for finding animal carcasses that are difficult to obtain. When competing for food, it always stretches its head, spreads its wings, stands up the feathers on its shoulders, and keeps jumping forward to make intimidating movements to drive away other individuals.

The Alpine vulture is not good at singing, and its call is a guttural sound of "hiss, hiss" or "hum, hum".

The breeding season of the Alpine vulture is from December to May of the following year. They usually nest in the recesses or niches of cliffs and rock walls on plateaus, mountains, and canyons, and often renovate old nests and continue to use them. The nest materials are mostly taken from nearby areas, mostly dead branches, and the inside is covered with soft materials such as animal hair. When nest materials are scarce, they even pick up old clothes and iron wire to build nests. Each nest usually lays one egg, which is white or dirty white, with a smooth surface without spots, and occasionally with brown spots. Some breeding pairs nest and breed alone, but most Alpine vultures share nesting areas during the breeding season, and the distance between nests is usually not too far.

In January 2022, hundreds of alpine vultures soared and circled in the sky from time to time on the rocky mountains in Wenshang, Wama Township, Baoshan City, Yunnan Province. Most of the time, they stayed on the nearby hills to rest, attracting many people to come and watch.

At about 19:00 on February 1, 2022, the alpine vulture couple "Yang Guo" and "Xiao Longnu" of Xining Wildlife Park laid an egg on the top of the Raptor Valley rockery. After 59 days of incubation, at 4:01 am on April 1, the chicks completely broke out of the shell. This is the sixth alpine vulture artificially bred in Xining Wildlife Park.

The main factor endangering the survival of alpine vultures is environmental pollution. For many years, grassland areas have often carried out large-scale poison bait to eliminate rats, and eating rodent carcasses often leads to secondary poisoning. In addition, indiscriminate hunting still occurs from time to time in some areas.

Listed in Appendix I, II and III of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) 2019 Edition Appendix II.

Listed in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN) 2021 ver 3.1 - Near Threatened (NT).  

Listed in China's National Key Protection Level: Level 2 Effective Year: 1989

Listed in China's Red Book of Endangered Animals Level: Rare Effective Year: 1996 

Listed in China's "National Key Protected Wildlife List" (February 5, 2021) Level 2.

Protect wild animals and eliminate game.

Maintaining ecological balance is everyone's responsibility!

Distributed in Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Thailand and Uzbekistan.
Migrant bird: Singapore.
Distributed in Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Ningxia in China.
Inhabits high mountains and plateaus, often active in forest tundra above alpine forests or plateau grasslands, deserts and bare rock areas. Or soaring in the sky, or perching on the ground or rocks in groups, sometimes hovering in the sky above the snow line. The breeding season is mostly in mountains at an altitude of 2000-6000 meters, and sometimes it goes down to the foot of the mountain in winter.

The head and upper part of the neck are covered with light yellow guard hairs. The feathers gradually turn white and turn into down feathers at the lower neck. There are long and lanceolate tufts of feathers at the base of the neck forming collar quills surrounding the neck. The skin is light yellow or tawny. , with central white rachis pattern. The coverts on the back and wings are light yellowish brown, and the center of the feathers is browner, forming some irregular brown spots. The outer coverts, flight feathers and tail feathers are dark brown, and the inner secondary flight feathers have light tips. The upper chest is light brown, and the rest of the underparts are light brown. The anal area and undertail coverts are nearly white, with unclear rachis patterns. Young birds have brown heads and more down feathers than adult birds. The upper body is dark brown, the back, shoulders and wing coverts have thick yellow-white vertical stripes, and the primary flight feathers and tail fe