Description
| Measurements | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|||||||||||||
This is a large vulture and is perhaps the largest and heaviest bird found in the Himalayas. Adults have a ruff that is long and pale brown with white streaks. The ruff feathers are long and spiky, the head is covered in down and the legs are feathered. The upperside is unstreaked buff, has a pale blue facial skin (dark blue in Gyps fulvus), a yellowish bill and pinkish legs. Younger birds have a pale parts to the bill. In flight the long fingers are splayed and there is a pale patagial stripe on the underwing. The wing and tail feathers are dark and contrast with the pale coverts and body. The feathers on the body have pale shaft streaks. They are similar in size to the Cinereous Vulture, which has a slightly shorter in length but large specimens can weigh more than the Himalayan Vulture. A field study estimated an average of 9 kg (20 lb) for the Himalayan Vulture, but weights can vary with conditions from 8–12 kg (18–26 lb). The wingspan of birds varies greatly depending on the method used to measure them and published measurements vary from 2.6 to 3.1 m (8.5 to 10 ft).
Read more about this topic: Himalayan Vulture
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)