Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture

Little Yellow -headed Vulture ( Cathartes burrovianus )

The Little Yellow -headed Vulture ( Cathartes burrovianus; Syn: C. urubitinga, C. urubutinga ) is the smallest members of the New World vultures ( Cathartidae ). He lives in Central America and northern and central South America.

Features

The Little Yellow -headed Vulture is 53-65 cm long and 950-1550 grams. It reaches a wingspan of 1.5 to 1.65 meters, his tail is short and 19 to 24 cm long. Males are only slightly smaller than the females. The plumage is dark, black on top, down more dark brown. In Flight Picture taken from below the bird black, the wings is silvery, the tail gray. The head is naked, yellow or orange, forehead and neck and red, the apex, sometimes the throat are blue-gray. The scalp is wrinkled. Beak and legs are whitish to pink.

Young birds have yellow legs, a dark head and beak and a bright neck.

Dissemination

As habitat it prefers forest edges, humid savannas and grasslands at altitudes of 1000 meters. There are two sub- modes.

The nominate C. burrovianus burrovianus comes in the coastal regions of southern Mexico, in front on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, the Caribbean region of Honduras, Nicaragua and northeastern Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, with the exception of the Andean region, and northwestern Venezuela.

Home of C. burrovianus urubitinga are the lowlands of South America, from Venezuela over the three Guiana, Brazil, eastern Bolivia, the extreme north and south of Paraguay, the Argentine provinces of Misiones and Corrientes, and the adjoining regions of Brazil Uruguay.

In some regions in Venezuela and Panama, the birds live only in certain seasons.

Way of life

Small yellow-headed vultures often sit on poles or other low residences. Your food you are looking for close to the ground flying in a glider a swinging. They rarely fly high. Using their keen sense of smell they find their existing mainly of carrion food. Their reproductive biology is largely unknown. In Suriname it was observed that they raise their brood in hollow tree trunks. Parents with two fledgling fledglings have been observed in May in Colombia.

The species is not endangered and is relatively numerous.