The Animal Diversity Web says 85 percent of a bearded vulture's diet is bone, and the rest is dead animal remains. One study summary says dead mammals make up 93 percent of the bearded vulture's food, and 61 percent comes from medium-sized hoofed animals.

Bearded vultures get bones from the remains of sheep, cattle, deer, ibex and other animals. A bearded vulture eats small and large bones, but seems to prefer larger, older 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.

Adult bearded vultures prefer to feed on bones, but scraps of meat and skin are an important part of a chick's diet. Young chicks cannot digest bone, so their parents bring them fresh meat first.

Once a bearded vulture finds a carcass, it often waits for other scavengers to finish before it feeds on the bones. It waits patiently at a cliff edge until the other scavengers have finished eating and does not compete for food. A bearded vulture helps clean up nature by eating what other animals leave behind.

A bearded vulture finds food by using its eyes. Like other Old World vultures, it has a poorly developed sense of smell. It uses the rising air along mountain slopes to help it search for the remains of dead animals.

Adult bearded vultures are dark gray-black or gray-blue on the back and wings, with lighter streaks along the feather shafts. A grown-up has orange feathers, most of all on its chest, and a dark beard by its beak. A young bearded vulture is dark and has a shorter beard that is hard to see.

The bearded vulture is one of the Old World vultures, which live in Africa, Europe and Asia. Bearded vultures live in places between 300 and 4,500 meters above sea level, but they are most often found above 2,000 meters above sea level.

The name lammergeier means lamb vulture, but the bird was wrongly blamed for taking lambs. In Spain the bearded vulture is called Quebrantahuesos, which means bone breaker.

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. As of November 2026, the bearded vulture is listed as Near Threatened, and its numbers are going down overall.

A bearded vulture nest of sticks may be about 3 feet (1 meter) high and 6 feet (2 meters) across the top. A pair builds up to five nests on sheltered ledges or in small caves on the mountainside, and it 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 egg takes about 55 days to hatch, and a pair of bearded vultures raises one chick in a breeding season.

Words to know

• scavengers: carrion eaters
• ibex: wild goat
• carcass: dead animal
• hoofed: having hooves
• breeding: raising young