Birds of prey adapted for a scavenging lifestyle, often showing a hooked beak and a head naked of feathers. No vulture is explicitly described as existing in Middle-earth, but the Winged Nazgûl are compared to them, flocking over a battlefield as vultures gather above the dead or dying. Vultures - or, at least, the heads of vultures - appeared in a more physical form at the gates of the Tower of Cirith Ungol. These gates were guarded by the Two Watchers: stone guardians carved with three heads looking in different directions, with each of these heads in the form of a staring vulture.
Notes
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There is no single group of related birds called 'vultures'; rather, the English word is used for a wide variety of unrelated carrion feeders that happen to share a similar lifestyle and general appearance. Tolkien presumably had in mind the common griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus) of Eurasia and north Africa, whose range would have fitted with the geography of Middle-earth.
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2 |
The origins of the Latin word vultur are unclear, except that it derived from an earlier form voltur. Some sources suggest a derivation from the verb vellere, 'to pluck, tear, stretch out', based on the bird's feeding habits.
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- Updated 19 September 2022
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