Great yellow-headed vulture
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Great yellow-headed vulture ( Cathartes melambrotus ) |
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| Wetmore , 1964 |
The great yellow-headed vulture ( Cathartes melambrotus ) is a member of the New World vulture (Cathartidae). He lives disjointly in northern and central South America . It has been suggested that the species is an allospecies of the lesser yellow-headed vulture ( Cathartes burrovianus ). But both types occur sympatric .
features
The great yellow-headed vulture becomes 64 to 76 cm long and weighs around 1650 grams. It reaches a wingspan of 1.66 to 1.78 meters, its tail is 25 to 29 cm long. Males reach the same size as the females. The plumage is velvety black and shinier than that of the lesser yellow-headed vulture. In the flight image from below, the bird is black, the wings and the tail are brown-gray, the inner hand wings are lighter. Their wings are wider than those of the lesser yellow-headed vulture and their tail is longer. The head is bare and yellow, and the neck is orange. The scalp is wrinkled. The parting and the skin in front of the eyes are blue-gray. The beak is whitish to pink. The legs are dirty white, the feet darker.
Young birds are less whitish in the neck.
distribution
The great yellow-headed vulture lives in pristine rainforests in the Amazon and avoids open landscapes and forests affected by logging. On the eastern edge of the Andes it goes up to heights of 700 meters. The area in which it has been detected so far is divided. In the lower Amazon it lives only south of the river, in the middle and upper Amazon only north of the river. It is also found in southwestern Colombia , southern Venezuela , the Orinoco Delta , Guyana , Suriname and the eastern lowlands of Peru . A small, possibly isolated occurrence is also located in the middle of the Bolivian lowlands.
Way of life
Large yellow-headed vultures look for the carcasses of dead, medium-sized mammals such as monkeys, sloths or possums, flying individually, more rarely in small groups at tree-top height . They track the carrion with their well-developed sense of smell. On the carcass it is dominant compared to the turkey vulture living in the same area . The flight of the great yellow-headed vulture is more powerful and less rocking than that of the small yellow-headed vulture. Large yellow-headed vultures rest on free-standing branches of large trees along with other vultures.
Their reproductive biology is unknown. A breeding pair has never been observed, one copulating in August.
The species is not considered endangered and is the most common vulture in the Colombian part of Amazonia in forests untouched by humans.
literature
- Ferguson-Lees & Christie: The birds of prey of the world (German by Volker Dierschke and Jochen Dierschke). Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co. KG, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-440-11509-1
- Josep del Hoyo et al .: Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 2: New World Vultures to Guinea Fowl. Lynx Edicions, 1994, ISBN 84-87334-15-6 .
Web links
- Cathartes melambrotus inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved November 18, 2013.