Critically Endangered
Slender-billed Vulture
Gyps tenuirostris
The Indian vulture is found only to the south of the Ganges and breeds on cliffs while the slender-billed vulture is found along and nests in trees.
Appearance
The slender-billed vulture is commonly mistaken for the Indian vulture, but there are a few key differences that differentiate the two species, primarily its darker head, and bill that is thinner than its sister species. This vulture is mostly grey with a pale rump and grey under-tail coverts. The black head is angular and narrow and its dark bill appears narrow midway, that also has a light spot on the culmen.
At 80 to 95 cm (31 to 37 in), in length, this mid-sized vulture is about the same size as its sister species, the Indian vulture. The wingspan of the vulture ranges from 196 to 258 cm (77 to 102 in).
Range and habitat
The slender-billed vulture is found in India from the Gangetic plain north, west to Himachal Pradesh, south potentially as far as northern Odisha, and east through Assam. It is also found in north and central Bangladesh, southern Nepal, Burma and Cambodia. Commonly found in areas that have slaughterhouses and small civilizations.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
The breeding season of this species occurs between the autumn and winter months of October and March, where a pair will build a large nest made of large, compact sticks high off of the ground where it is built into the branches of large trees. Typical breeding trees for this species tend to be quite large, ranging from 7 to 25 meters.
Once the pair and nest is established, slender-billed vultures almost exclusively lay one egg for each clutch, that takes around a month and a half (50 days) to incubate. The Indian vulture is found only to the south of the Ganges and breeds on cliffs while the slender-billed vulture is found along and nests in trees.
In crisis
It is Critically Endangered since 2002 as the population on the Indian subcontinent has declined rapidly. As of 2021, fewer than 870 mature individuals are thought to remain. The population of this species and the Indian vulture declined by 97% overall and in India annual decline rates for both species averaged over 16% between 2000–2007.
Wild populations remain from northern and eastern India through southern Nepal and Bangladesh, with a small population in Burma. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has placed the approximate number of slender-billed vultures living beyond confines at about 1,000 in 2009 and predictions estimate total extinction within the next decade amongst the wild population.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Slender-billed Vulture is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Slender-billed Vulture, Wikidata item Q862806. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
