HomaFlight

The Huma bird or Homa birdm, bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus), also known as the lammergeier and ossifrage, is a bird of prey and the only member of the genus Gypaetus. This bird is also identified as Huma bird or Homa bird in Iran and north west Asia. Traditionally considered an Old World vulture, it actually forms a minor lineage of Accipitridae together with the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus), its closest living relative. It is not much more closely related to the Old World vultures proper than to, for example, hawks, and differs from the former by its feathered neck. Although dissimilar, the Egyptian and bearded vulture each have a lozenge-shaped tail—unusual among birds of prey.

The lammergeier is sparsely distributed across a vast, considerable range. It occurs in mountainous regions in the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Arabian Peninsula, the Caucasus region, the Zagros Mountains, the Alborz, the Koh-i-Baba in Bamyan, Afghanistan, the Altai Mountains, the Himalayas, Ladakh in northern India, western and central China. In Africa, it is found in the Atlas Mountains, the Ethiopian Highlands and south from Sudan to northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, central Kenya and northern Tanzania. An isolated population inhabits the Drakensberg of South Africa. In Israel it has been extirpated as a breeder since 1981, but young birds have been reported in 2000, 2004 and 2016.

The bearded vulture is considered a threatened species in Iran. Iranian mythology considers the rare bearded vulture (Persian: هما, 'Homa') the symbol of luck and happiness. It was believed that if the shadow of a Homa fell on one, he would rise to sovereignty[36] and anyone shooting the bird would die in forty days. The habit of eating bones and apparently not killing living animals was noted by Sa'di in Gulistan, written in 1258, and Emperor Jahangir had a bird's crop examined in 1625 to find that it was filled with bones.

The ancient Greeks used ornithomancers to guide their political decisions: bearded vultures, or ossifragae were one of the few species of birds that could yield valid signs to these soothsayers.

The Greek playwright Aeschylus was said to have been killed in 456 or 455 BC by a tortoise dropped by an eagle who mistook his bald head for a stone—if this incident did occur, the bearded vulture is a likely candidate for the "eagle".

In the Bible/Torah, the bearded vulture, as the ossifrage, is among the birds forbidden to be eaten