New Delhi: A rare Himalayan Griffon Vulture was rescued by locals from the Eidgah cemetery of Kanpur's Colonelganj and later handed over to the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department, as reported by the news agency ANI. The incident has created a lot of buzz on the Internet. People in the Kanpur village were not able to hold back their excitement after the incident that happened over the weekend.

The young population at the village were posing with the scavenger bird, pulling its wings to a full stretch to show off their capture. According to the experts, the Griffon Vulture is one the biggest bird species found in the Himalayas with a wing span of over '6-feet'.

"Himalayan Griffon vultures are now nearly threatened. They are called ecosystem engineers," says Indian Forest Service officer Praveen Kaswan in one of his tweets last year when he rehabilitated one of the rare birds. Kaswan took a look at the visuals shared on Twitter also by ANI and confirmed: "It looks like a Himalayan Griffon Vulture. Sub-adults are migratory, adults live on higher reaches. They can live upto 40-45 years of age."

Their large wingspan helps these vultures soar high in the sky searching for carcasses on the ground. It is a documented fact that by feeding on the carcasses, vultures prevent diseases from spreading to humans. The locals at the Kanpur Eidgah, who played with the rare species were lucky to capture the bird with less energy as it appeared subdued, ANI reported.

There was hardly any counter from the bird as the people around pulled at its magnificent wings or cajoled it as a baby in their arms. In winter the Himalayan Griffon Vultures are seen in Terai and adjoining areas -- a kind of local migration for the species, experts added.

A local from the Kanpur village, Mohd. Safiq, said, "The vulture we finally managed to capture had been here for a week. We tried to catch it but didn't succeed. Finally, we captured it when it came down," as quoted by ANI. 

Talking about the rare sighting, the excited youngster said he often heard there were now fewer vultures in the country and wondered if prize money has been announced for capturing vultures. Safiq said, "We handed over the vulture to the Forest Department in the presence of the police."

Himalayan griffon vulture

The Himalayan vulture (Gyps himalayensis) or Himalayan griffon vulture is an Old World vulture native to the Himalayas and the adjoining Tibetan Plateau. It is one of the two largest Old World vultures and true raptors. It is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List.

This is a huge vulture, and is perhaps the largest and heaviest bird found in the Himalayas. It is the largest of the species in the Gyps genus, seemingly averaging larger in every method of measurement than its relatives. Adults have a ruff that is long and pale brown with white streaks. The ruff feathers are long and spiky. The head is covered in down which is yellowish in adults but whitish in immature vultures.

The underside and under-wing coverts are quite pale brown or buff, being almost white in some specimens. The legs are covered with buffy feathers and the feet can vary from greenish grey to white. The upperside is unstreaked, pale buff with the tail quills, outer greater coverts and wing quills being a contrasting dark brown. The inner-secondaries have paler tips.

The pale blue facial skin is lighter than the dark blue in Gyps fulvus with this species having a yellowish bill. In flight the long fingers are splayed and there is a pale patagial stripe on the underwing. The wing and tail feathers are dark and contrast with the pale coverts and body, one of the best methods to distinguish this species from the slightly smaller griffon vulture. The feathers on the body have pale shaft streaks.

They are distinguished from the Indian vulture (G. indicus), which can somewhat similar in color by being much larger with a stouter, more robust bill. Younger birds have a pale parts to the bill and tend to have buffy-white streaks on the scapulars and wing coverts contrasting with dark brown underparts. They are similar in size to the cinereous vulture (Aegypius monachus), which has a slightly shorter overall length but in large specimens can weigh more than the Himalayan vulture.

Weight in Himalayan vultures can range from reportedly as little as 6 kg lb abbr=on to as much as 12.5 kg lb abbr=on. A field study estimated an average of 9 kg lb abbr=on for the Himalayan vulture, but weights can vary with conditions from 8 - 12 kg lb abbr=on. The wingspan of birds varies greatly depending on the method used to measure them and published measurements vary from 2.56 to 3.1 m ft abbr=on, a similar wingspan range as a cinereous vulture.

The Himalayan vulture lives mainly in the higher regions of the Himalayas, the Pamirs, Kazakhstan and on the Tibetan Plateau, with northwestern limits of the breeding range being in Afghanistan and southern limits in Bhutan. Juvenile birds may however disperse further south, and vagrants have been recorded in Thailand, Burma, Singapore and Cambodia.

The Himalayan vulture perches on crags, favourite sites showing white marks from regular defecation. They tend to not range below an elevation of 1215 m ft abbr=on. Himalayan vultures often bask in the sun on rocks. They soar in thermals and are not capable of sustained flapping flight. Flocks may follow grazers up the mountains in their search for dead animals. This vulture makes a rattling sound when descending on a carcass and can grunt or hiss at roosts or when feeding on carrion.

They have been recorded eating carrion exclusively, some which is fed on even when putrid. On the Tibetan Plateau 64% of their diet is obtained from dead domestic yak (Bos grunniens). They feed on old carcasses sometimes waiting a couple of days near a dead animal. They disdain offal, which is readily eaten by other vultures, and instead typically eat only fleshy parts. Historically, Himalayan vultures regularly fed on human corpses left out on Celestial burial grounds.

This species is fairly contentious around other scavengers and typically dominates other meat-eaters at carrion, though is subservient to gray wolves (Canis lupus), snow leopards (Panthera uncia) and cinereous vultures at carcasses. In a large party, these vultures can reportedly strip a human or sheep carcass of all meat in 30 minutes and do the same to a yak carcass in roughly 120 minutes. Himalayan vultures have been observed feeding on pine (Pinus roxburghii) needles, an unexplained behaviour that cannot be for obtaining nutrition.

Threats

Himalayan vultures are susceptible to toxicity induced by diclofenac, a drug whose residues in domestic animal carcasses has led to rapid declines in populations of other Gyps vultures across Asia. The Himalayan griffon vulture populations have however not shown signs of rapid decline although reductions in nesting birds have been noted in some parts of its range in Nepal.