In various ways, birds of prey get their food. Among them there are representatives who feed exclusively on animal corpses. These are carrion birds, which have their common, similar features.
Features
These birds are a serious competitor to hyenas, eating carrion. Bright representatives are the vulture, vulture, griffon vulture, bearded man. Distributed mainly in Africa and Eurasia. In America, there are condor, American vulture and black cathart. Some of these birds were originally predators, but over time they switched to carrion consumption.
All carrion birds are distinguished by high adaptability to long-distance flights, during which they search for the corpses of large animals. They begin to eat, as a rule, with internal organs. It is this fact that scientists explain the absence of feathers on the neck of most of these birds. When carrion birds peck the carcass of an animal from the inside, the bare neck does not allow food debris to accumulate on it. With such a diet, poisoning is excluded, because the stomach of these birds is capable of producing a substance that neutralizes cadaveric poison. The scavenger’s claws weakened during evolution, so it’s no longer possible to hunt live prey with them.
Lifestyle
Carrion birds of prey are rarely found singly. In search of food, they usually hover together above the surface of the earth, and when they find prey, they gather around it with the whole flock.
In different ways, they approach food. The bearded man will circumnavigate the prey for a long time, gradually descending at a certain distance from it. After a little pause, he begins to move toward her slowly. Vulture Uruba, on the contrary, can practically fall on a carcass marked from a height.
Many scavengers have adapted to monitor the behavior of hyenas or their fellow tribesmen, hoping that sooner or later they will lead them to prey.
Some representatives of these birds prefer to eat finally decomposed animal corpses, while others look for meat fresher. They differ in the way they absorb food. For example, the vulture does not touch the skeleton and skin, eating only the inside. The bearded man feeds mainly on bones, having a stomach quite adapted for this. Therefore, several different species of carrion can be fed on one corpse at the same time, without interfering with each other.
Vulture
A large bird, whose wingspan is about three meters, and weight - from 7 to 13 kg. Adult individuals are dark brown in color. Almost bare neck is bordered by long, light feathers.
These carrion birds most often nest in the foothills, have constant pairs. Nests create simply huge, able to withstand two adults.
The neck has a very developed sense of smell, so it most often sniffs the smells of carrion, sitting on a tree branch, or flying very low above the ground. The bird is very clean and takes water procedures after each meal. She does this not so much for pleasure, but in order to disinfect her plumage after a meal.
Vultures feed mainly on carcasses of animals that died at the hands of hunters or died a natural death. In search of food, these birds are able to travel huge distances and notice prey from a height of more than one and a half kilometers.
Griffon vulture
These carrion birds are very similar to black vultures. They got their name for the head that stands out with a white spot. Like the neck, the neck has a collar of long feathers.
Body color is brown, only wings and tail are black. It lives mainly in the mountains of Central Asia, in the south of Europe, in India. White-headed vultures nest in groups of 3-5 pairs, sometimes whole colonies, numbering more than a dozen pairs of these birds. Both parents incubate masonry in turn, this period lasts 53 days.
In early May, chicks appear who begin to fly independently no earlier than August. After the departure, the parents feed their brood for about three months.
Vulture
These birds got their name because they feed on the remains of dead animals. In the old days, the word "bitch" meant "carrion." The appearance of the vultures does not cause fear - small-sized birds weighing no more than 2 kg, with a thin physique and a thin beak. The plumage depends on the species. There are only two of them - the ordinary vulture and brown. The first one is covered with feathers and even on the head has something resembling a mohawk. The main habitats are Africa, Europe, the Canary Islands. It also occurs in Russia. The brown vulture has more similarities with vultures - the same bare neck and head. It is found in South Africa, on the Mediterranean coast, in the Caucasus. The body of adult birds is covered with white plumage, and the fly wings are completely black.
These carrion birds use a whole palette of different sound signals to communicate with each other. Their thin beak is not able to split the skulls and bones of large animals, so the main diet is made up of the corpses of rodents, lizards, snakes, birds. During the nesting period, the female lays only 2 eggs. The chicks that appeared after 42 days are exposed to various dangers in the form of an attack by golden eagles, foxes, eagle owls and wolves.
In ancient times, among the indigenous peoples of North America, the vulture was considered a sacred bird. In Europe, on the contrary, for eating they fell, they were always treated with disgust.
