Ruppell's Griffon Vulture
We recently received a couple of these characters at the National Zoo. They are great fun to watch. A male and female. Sort of like an old married couple sometimes. Like kids at other times.
Ruppell's vultures are highly social, roosting, nesting, and gathering to feed in large flocks.
Most vultures are silent, unless they are either at a nesting ground or competing for a carcass.
Ruppell's griffon is the highest flying bird on record, once spotted at an altitude of over 37, 000 feet in the skies of Africa. From a standing start the Ruppell’s vulture can fly over three miles in six minutes. They can cruise at over 22 miles per hour, and will fly as far as 90 miles from their nest in search of food.
They mate for life, which may be forty or fifty years. In vulture courtship, pairs circle close together near cliffs. Pairs perch together for long periods of time, and form colonies of up to 1,000 breeding pairs. They make large nests of sticks lined with grass and leaves. The females will often steal the sticks from other nests and the males arrange them.
Depending upon its location, a nesting site may be used year after year or never again. Both parents incubate, brood, and feed the chicks. The pair lays a single egg each year, and the chick is only just gaining independence when the next breeding cycle begins. The incubation period of the eggs is 55 days, and the chick fledges in 12 weeks. (National Zoo Website)
I plan to return with different lenses and take better pictures of these fellows.
