The lammergeier has a very unusual diet — it specialises almost entirely in eating bones. After other animals have eaten all the meat from a carcass, the lammergeier swoops in for the bones. Its stomach acid is so strong it can digest bone that would make other animals very ill. This means it fills a unique role in the ecosystem: the clean-up crew that deals with leftovers nobody else wants.
When bones are too large to swallow whole, the lammergeier picks them up, flies high into the air, and drops them onto rocks below. This shatters the bone into pieces the right size to eat. Scientists have found particular flat rocks — called 'ossuaries' — that individual birds use again and again as their favourite dropping spots, with hundreds of fragments below.
Lammergeiers dye their feathers orange on purpose! They roll in iron-rich soil or rub themselves against rust-coloured rocks to stain their white breast feathers orange. Scientists think the brighter orange a bird is, the more experienced and healthy it appears to other lammergeiers — so it is a kind of natural status display.
These birds are rare and need large territories to thrive. In Georgia, the Caucasus mountains provide the perfect habitat: remote, rocky, and full of the wild animals whose bones the lammergeier depends on. Spotting one soaring overhead, with its extraordinary rust-and-black silhouette, is a truly unforgettable sight.