I love to watch these turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) fly overhead. Their huge wings and flight feather really stand out against the blue sky. They look majestic as they float on the thermals.
"If you’ve gone looking for raptors on a clear day, your heart has probably leaped at the sight of a large, soaring bird in the distance– perhaps an eagle or osprey. But if it's soaring with its wings raised in a V and making wobbly circles, it's likely a Turkey Vulture. These birds ride thermals in the sky and use their keen sense of smell to find fresh carcasses. They are a consummate scavenger, cleaning up the countryside one bite of their sharply hooked bill at a time, and never mussing a feather on their bald heads." - allaboutbirds.org
The Bearded Vulture is the only known animal whose diet is almost exclusively bone.
The bone-eating giant bird which coats itself minerals like copper to get its rusty hue for unknown cosmetic reasons, most likely to show dominance. The brighter the hue, the more dominant the male.
They probably need the copper because its anti-bacterial properties. useful if you’re a carrion eater.
The bird has a 9 ft wingspan.
Bearded Vultures provide an indispensable service to the ecosystem, checking the spread of disease by consuming corpses. But the bearded’s diet is 95 percent bone. It can wait for the other scavengers to strip the body clean, then stroll in at its leisure to take its fill.