With its colourful plumage and the curious orange and purplish blue flaps of skin that adorn its face, the king vulture is one of the most easily recognized of the New World vultures. It owes its name to the observation that when it approaches a carcass, any other birds that have already arrived stop feeding to make for it. Like many of the vultures, including the unrelated Old World species, it sometimes eats so much flesh that it has difficulty becoming airborne again.