In Africa, bearded vultures live in the Ethiopian highlands and in parts of Uganda, Kenya, Lesotho and South Africa, and bearded vultures are most often found above 2,000 meters above sea level. A bearded vulture lives in hard-to-reach places far from people, even as high as 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) in the Himalayas.

Bearded vultures are mostly monogamous, but groups of two males and a female are common in the Pyrenees mountains. A pair builds up to five nests on sheltered ledges or in small caves on the mountainside and uses the same nest again in later breeding seasons. Nest building starts about 111 days before the eggs are laid.

In the wild, bearded vulture males first breed at an average age of 8.9 years, and females at about 7.7 years, while in the Alps a bearded vulture pair starts a brood between late December and late February.

Bearded vultures usually lay two eggs in a season but can rear only one young. A bearded vulture egg is incubated for about 54 days, and the time from egg laying to leaving the nest is about 177 days. Bearded vultures often breed successfully only every second or third year.

Unlike other vultures, bearded vultures bring pieces of food to their young without bringing it up from the stomach, and young chicks cannot digest bone, so their parents bring them fresh meat first, while scraps of meat and skin are an important part of a chick's diet.

A young bearded vulture's first flight is 110 to 130 days after hatching, and it usually leaves its parents' territory at about 8 months old. A young bearded vulture is dark and has a shorter beard that is hard to see.

As of November 2026, fewer wild hoofed animals and cleaner livestock farming mean less carrion for bearded vultures in some places, and as of November 2026, the isolated population of Lesotho and South Africa was put at 200 to 250 birds, and the bearded vulture is listed as Near Threatened, with numbers going down overall.

Bearded vultures have very large home territories, from 250 to 700 square kilometers, and their foraging areas have been reported to be as large as 7,500 square kilometers. Bearded vulture pairs guard their breeding territories, but their feeding ranges overlap with other pairs.

One average from studies gives the lifespan of a wild bearded vulture as 21.4 years, while captive birds have lived over 45 years, and bearded vultures older than 30 years are not uncommon in the wild. In zoos bearded vultures can live to be 40 to 50 years old.

Words to know

• monogamous: one partner
• incubated: kept warm
• brood: young family
• carrion: dead animal flesh
• hatching: coming out