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Bird

Red-headed Vulture

Sarcogyps calvus

हिन्दी: लाल सिर वाला गिद्ध

IUCN: Critically Endangered
Red-headed Vulture (Sarcogyps calvus) photographed by Devendra Bhardwaj

Image: Devendra Bhardwaj · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0 · Uttarakhand · Resized

Scientific name
Sarcogyps calvus
Hindi name
लाल सिर वाला गिद्ध
Family
Accipitridae, order Accipitriformes
Group
Bird
Conservation status
Critically Endangered

The king vulture with a red face.

  • Spot it Bare red head, black body and pale thigh patches.
  • Home Open country and forest.
  • Food web Eats dead animals.
  • Why it matters Clears carcasses quickly, stopping the spread of disease and returning nutrients to the land.

Read more: Red-headed vulture on Wikipedia

Sources and credits

Records and field notes

  • IndiaDevendra Bhardwaj has 1 verified record of this species on iNaturalist in 2011, in Uttarakhand.[20]

Sources

  1. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (species pages linked on each entry) (database). Global conservation status. Every species page was opened.
  2. Devendra Bhardwaj. iNaturalist observations and notes, with place and date (inaturalist.org/people/devendrabhardwaj) (field record). The observer's own dated records and notes, with places. Statements in his notes are his own and were not independently checked by KJVF.
  3. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF species data (family, order, Hindi names, IUCN category) (database). Open biodiversity data. Used for classification, Hindi common names and the IUCN category where one is given.
  4. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (opening lines of each species article, CC BY-SA 4.0). The link on each entry goes to the article (reference). Not peer reviewed. Only the opening description is used, and statements about origin or medicinal use are left out.
  5. Short introductions and key points written with AI help (Google Gemini and Claude) and checked against GBIF where possible (reference). AI-assisted text for general readers. Please check important details before relying on them.

The tag before each record shows the place it was checked for.

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