King James Bible Dictionary

Heb. peres = to "break" or "crush", the lammer-geier, or bearded vulture, the largest of the whole vulture tribe. It was an unclean bird (Leviticus 11:13; Deuteronomy 14:12). It is not a gregarious bird, and is found but rarely in Palestine. "When the other vultures have picked the flesh off any animal, he comes in at the end of the feast, and swallows the bones, or breaks them, and swallows the pieces if he cannot otherwise extract the marrow. The bones he cracks [hence the appropriateness of the name ossifrage, i.e., "bone-breaker"] by letting them fall on a rock from a great height. He does not, however, confine himself to these delicacies, but whenever he has an opportunity will devour lambs, kids, or hares. These he generally obtains by pushing them over cliffs, when he has watched his opportunity; and he has been known to attack men while climbing rocks, and dash them against the bottom. But tortoises and serpents are his ordinary food...No doubt it was a lammer-geier that mistook the bald head of the poet AEschylus for a stone, and dropped on it the tortoise which killed him" (Tristram's Nat. Hist.).

A carnivorous bird, forbidden as food.
Leviticus 11:13; Deuteronomy 14:12

(the bone-breaker). The Hebrew word occurs, as the name of an unclean bird, in (Leviticus 11:13) and Deuteronomy 14:12 It is probably the lammergeyer , or bearded vulture as it is sometimes called, one of the largest of the birds of prey. It well deserves its name ossifrage, bone breaker , for "not only does he push kids and lambs and even men off the rocks, but he takes the bones of animals that other birds of prey have denuded of the flesh high up into the air and lets them fall upon a stone in order to crack them and render them more digestible even for his enormous powers of deglutition. Marrow-bones are the dainties he loves. This is probably the bird that dropped a tortoise on the bald head of poor old 'schylus."

N. H. Simpson.

OS'SIFRAGE, noun [Latin ossifraga. See Ospray.]

The ospray or sea-eagle. In Leviticus 11:13, it denotes a different fowl.