Egyptian Vulture

The Egyptian vulture, also called the white scavenger vulture or pharaoh's chicken, is a small Old World vulture and the only species in its genus. The adult's plumage is white with black flight feathers in the wings, though wild birds usually look soiled with a rusty or brown shade from mud or iron-rich soil. The contrasting underwing pattern and wedge-shaped tail make it distinctive in flight. The bill is black in the nominate subspecies but pale or yellowish in adults of the smaller Indian form, which measures 47–52 cm in males and 52–55.5 cm in females (Wikipedia, general species account).

It is widely distributed from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa to West Asia and India, and in the Himalaya goes up to about 2,000 m in summer. It feeds mainly on carrion but is opportunistic and will prey on small mammals, birds and reptiles, and it eats the eggs of other birds, breaking larger ones by tossing a pebble onto them, one of the rare examples of tool use in birds; it also uses twigs to roll up wool for its nest. Populations that breed in temperate regions migrate south in winter, while tropical ones are relatively sedentary. SoIB 2023 rates it a High conservation priority, with a rapid long-term decline of about 80% and a current decline of about 5% a year (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).