Himalayan vulture

range The Himalayan vulture has dark brown greater covert feathers, tail and wing quills, but a pale buff uniform upperside and paler tipped inner secondaries; its legs are covered with buffy feathers and vary in colour from greenish grey to pale brown. The underside and under-wing coverts are pale brown or buff, almost white in some individuals. The whitish down on the head of immatures changes to yellowish in adults who have a long and pale brown ruff with white streaks and long and spiky ruff feathers. The pale blue facial skin is lighter than the dark blue in Gyps fulvus with this species having a yellowish bill. In flight the long fingers are splayed and there is a pale patagial stripe on the underwing. The wing and tail feathers are dark and contrast with the pale coverts and body, one of the best methods to distinguish this species from the slightly smaller griffon vulture. The feathers on the body have pale shaft streaks. It is the largest of the Gyps species, averaging larger in every method of measurement than its relatives, and is perhaps the largest and heaviest bird in the Himalayas. to . It has been estimated to weigh an average of , but weights vary with conditions from . Published measurements of the wingspan vary from , a similar range to that of cinereous vulture, It differs from the similar-coloured Indian vulture (G. indicus) by a stouter, more robust bill; younger birds have a pale bill and tend to have buffy-white streaks on the scapulars and wing coverts contrasting with dark brown underparts. ==Distribution==

The Himalayan vulture lives mainly in the higher regions of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau at the elevation range of . It is distributed from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Iran to Pakistan to India, Nepal, Bhutan to western China and Mongolia. ==Behaviour and ecology==

Diet The Himalayan vulture perches on crags, favourite sites showing white marks from regular defecation. They tend to not range below an elevation of . However, each vulture species has a specialty diet: Himalayan vultures largely disdain offal (which is readily eaten by other vulture species), typically eating only fleshy tissue. Breeding The breeding season begins in January. The nest is a platform of sticks placed on an inaccessible ledge on a cliff. Nest in northeastern India have been recorded at between in elevation, but those in Tibet have been as high as . A single white egg marked with red splotches is the usual clutch. ==Threats==

, West Bengal Himalayan vultures are susceptible to toxicity induced by diclofenac, a drug whose residues in domestic animal carcasses has led to rapid declines in populations of other Gyps vultures across Asia. The Himalayan griffon vulture populations have however not shown signs of rapid decline, although reductions in nesting birds have been noted in some parts of its range in Nepal. ==References==