Cinereous Vulture

It is a very large brownish-black predator with wide, long wings and a very short tail with a slightly wedge-shaped tip. In adult birds, the main color background is dark brown. The head is bluish-gray, covered with sparse gray down, and the neck is almost bare. There is a lush brown "collar" of elongated feathers around the base of the neck. The massive beak is dark horn-colored (black in young), and the nostrils, unlike in barn owls, are rounded. The wax and bare skin areas near the beak are light blue. The eyes are black, with a light ring. The paws are bluish-gray, with black claws. Males and females are not externally distinguishable. The young differ from the adults in their very dark, almost black coloration, with blackish down on the head and neck, a light blue waxy patch and a bare spot on the neck. They differ from a similar young Gyps himalayensis in the absence of light mottling on the underside of the body. The soaring vulture has a characteristic rectangular silhouette with straight outstretched wings and widely spaced primary flight feathers, the ends of which are lowered down. Unlike barn owls, the neck is usually not stretched, so the head looks as if pressed into the shoulders and slightly lowered (kz.birding.day).