August 15th, 2019: Bearded Vulture

[xoxoxoBruce]

There are Vultures everywhere except Australia and the Antarctic. There are two kinds of Vultures, the Old World Vultures in
Africa, Europe, Asia, and the New World Vultures... you can guess where they are... duh.
Vultures do us a great service cleaning up rotting flesh which can spread all sorts of diseases.
But it’s like Ralph Kramden inviting Norton for dinner...Ed, your service is appreciated but do not talk about work.



Vultures are kind of disgusting in that they shit on themselves to cool off, squabble with animals over their kills, don’t have head
feathers so they can dive into the putrid gore, and really really ugly. But like most families, Vultures have one posh member, who
refuses to fight for supper or dive into the gore.
The Bearded Vulture prefers to dine alone, and if it could, probably with the good china and cloth napkins.



How can he do this and not starve? The bearded vulture is the only known animal whose diet consists almost entirely of bone.
If there happens to be some flesh left he'll eat it, but is capable of swallowing a sheep’s vertebrae whole. The bird’s stomach acid
has been estimated to have a pH of 1, so even large bones are digested within 24 hours.



They are all black and white. Wait... the pictures show varying amounts of red? Technically it’s crimson and it’s makeup, not Avon,
the natural kind. The dandies rub themselves with anything crimson, mud/dirt/dust, to impress the ladies. A territory with very red
soil will be highly contested and defended. So a dandy with a lot of red shows he’s enough of a badass to hold that territory, and
proficient enough at food acquisition to have time left over to primp. He bad!