Bearded vultures live in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. In Africa, they live in the Ethiopian highlands and in parts of Uganda, Kenya, Lesotho and South Africa.

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 often live in lonely places with cliffs, steep drops or gorges.

A bearded vulture uses the rising air along mountain slopes to help it search for the remains of dead animals. It can glide for hours without flapping its wings. It finds food by using its eyes.

A bearded vulture eats mostly bones. Small bones are eaten whole, while larger ones are carried away from a carcass and dropped from a great height so they break open. Bones a bearded vulture eats can be up to 10 centimeters across and can weigh up to 4 kilograms.

Very strong acid in its stomach helps a bearded vulture digest bones.

Vultures remove dead animals from the land quickly, which limits the spread of disease. A bearded vulture helps clean up nature by eating what other animals leave behind.

An adult bearded vulture weighs about 4.5 to 7 kilograms (10 to 15 pounds) and measures 94 to 125 centimeters (37 to 49 inches) from beak to tail. Male and female bearded vultures look very alike, but females are slightly larger on average. The bearded vulture is the largest breeding bird of the Alps.

A bearded vulture pair builds up to five nests on sheltered ledges or in small caves on the mountainside. It lines a nest with sticks, wool, hair and even rags. A pair uses the same nest again in later breeding seasons.

In the Alps, bearded vultures start breeding in winter, between late December and late February. A bearded vulture is grown up enough to breed at 5 to 7 years old. An egg takes about 55 days to hatch, and a pair raises one chick in a breeding season.

The bearded vulture was completely gone from the Alps by the beginning of the 20th century. People brought bearded vultures back to the Alps in 1986, starting in Austria.

In zoos, bearded vultures can live to be 40 to 50 years old.

Words to know

• carcass: dead animal
• gorges: deep valleys
• highlands: high land
• slopes: hillsides
• breeding: raising young