The red-headed vulture (Sarcogyps calvus) is a large bird that is mainly black with a bare reddish head, neck, and legs. It is also known as the Asian king vulture, Indian black vulture, or Pondicherry vulture.
The red-headed vulture is 75 to 85 cm long, weighs 3,500 to 5,500 grams, and has a wingspan of 200 to 230 cm. The adult's head is deep-red to orange, while the juvenile's is paler red. The male's eyes are yellowish to white, while the female's are dark brown.
The red-headed vulture is mainly found in the Indian subcontinent, with small populations in some parts of Southeast Asia. It is common in the western Himalayan foothills, but found in low numbers across the rest of India. It is believed to be primarily restricted to the northern and eastern plains of Cambodia, and is considered nearly extinct in Thailand.
The red-headed vulture is a carrion feeder, and its diet consists mostly of carcasses of animals such as deer, livestock, and turtles. They occasionally feed on fresh meat, killing fish that are stranded on dry land and killing already injured birds or other prey.
It is a medium-sized vulture of 76 to 86 cm (30 to 34 in) in length, weighing 3.5–6.3 kg (7.7–13.9 lb) and having a wingspan of about 1.99–2.6 m (6.5–8.5 ft). It has a prominent naked head: deep-red to orange in the adult, paler red in the juvenile. It has a black body with pale grey band at the base of the flight feathers. The sexes differ in colour of the iris: males have a paler, whitish iris, whilst in females it is dark brown.
The red-headed vulture is very similar in appearance to its larger relative the Lappet-faced vulture in Africa and Arabia, even being historically placed in the genus Torgos
The red-headed vulture used to be declining, but only slowly; in 2004 the species was uplisted to near threatened from least concern by the IUCN. The widespread use of the NSAID diclofenac in veterinary medicine in India has caused its population to collapse in recent years, however. Diclofenac is a compound now known to be extremely poisonous to vultures. The red-headed vulture population has essentially halved every other year since the late 1990s, and what once was a plentiful species numbering in the hundreds of thousands has come dangerously close to extinction in less than two decades. Consequently, it was uplisted to critically endangered in the 2007 IUCN Red List.
Several NSAIDs have been found to be harmful to scavenging birds. Diclofenac, carprofen, flunixin, ibuprofen and phenylbutazone were associated with mortality. Meloxicam has thus far been found to be "Vulture-Safe" and its use in veterinary treatment of livestock is being encouraged.
The red-headed vulture has started becoming more harder to come by as it is being hunted down. Places like Cambodia have put together special programs to help critically endangered vulture species. There has been evidenced compiled that showed hunters have started “ the use of poisons in hunting practices”, which has led to the population analysis showing “that since 2010 populations of the White-rumped Vulture (Gyps bengalensis) and Red-headed Vulture (Sarcogyps calvus) have declined, while the Slender-billed Vulture (Gyps tenuirostris) may also have started to decline since 2013”.
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