Cinereous Vulture

How to identify

Field marks

1. Bare skin on head and neck blue-gray, whitish above eyes
2. Bill massive and blue-gray
3. Wings very broad, like “barn doors”
4. Appears almost entirely black in flight at a distance

Male, female and young

Size overlaps broadly between the sexes, with females usually slightly heavier; immatures have rufous-brown upperparts and a paler belly.

Voice

Usually very quiet, giving only a few moans, roars or gurgles near the nest.

Similar species

Himalayan Vulture

Similar in size and shape; Cinereous Vulture appears slightly heavier, with a slightly longer bill; Gyps vultures have paler plumage, often with stripes.

Where and when it's recorded

Busiest months: April–May · Most records: Spain, Mongolia, India

Cinereous Vulture has been recorded at 445 of the 8,276 birding hotspots we track, in 37 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

To protect this bird from disturbance, we don't list exact sites.

Countries and regions with the most records

SpainMongoliaIndiaChinaSouth KoreaPortugalAzerbaijanTürkiye

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The cinereous vulture (Aegypius monachus), also known as the black vulture, Eurasian black vulture, and monk vulture, is a very large raptor in the family Accipitridae distributed through much of temperate Eurasia. With a body length of 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in), 3.1 m (10 ft) across the wings and a maximum weight of 12.5 kg (28 lb), it is the largest Old World vulture and largest member of the family Accipitridae.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions