There are 23 species of vulture (all shown in images above. The first 16 (first 4 rows) are Old world species (family Accipitridae) found across Europe, Africa and Asia. The last 2 rows (7 species) contain all of the new world species (family Cathartidae) from the Americas. Vultures are often overlooked and perceived as lowly scavengers, but they play a crucial role in the environments in which they live. These scavengers clean up after death, helping to keep ecosystems healthy and prevent the spread of disease.

Given this position (and the fact that they do not hunt living prey – some are clearly capable, given how they defend themselves when cornered) it is odd that these birds are so hated. It is unfortunately relatively easy to kill large numbers of them, and they will congregate around dead animals, and therefore, by poisoning the carcass can sometime kill hundreds of the vultures. This is highly foolish as without them, there are often far more deaths in farms in various parts of the world.

In any healthy ecosystem, it is often not hard to see vultures. They can either be seen sitting around a kill, waiting for the predator to have had its fill so that they can take theirs, or alternatively you can see them circling often far far up in the sky.

Vultures are unfortunately missing from increasing numbers of ecosystems around the world, or remain but at highly depleted numbers.

Click on the images at the top of the page to go to the page for each individual species