Bone-crunching vulture makes pit stop on a Peterborough road

As reasons for being late go, a vulture causing a traffic jam would be right up there – but that's exactly what happened in Peterborough, of all places.

Vigo, a bone-eating bird with an 8ft wingspan, stunned motorists when it landed in the middle of a busy road in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.

The bearded vulture, or lammergeier, is rarely seen in the UK. Normally found in Alpine regions, it is believed to have spent the summer roosting in the Peak District.

Recent sightings of Vigo are the first of a bearded vulture in British skies since one was spotted and photographed over Dartmoor, in Devon, in 2016.

The bearded vulture is categorised as "near threatened", according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.

The birds, which normally live and breed on crags in high mountains, feed mainly on bones from the carcasses of large herbivores such as sheep. Their distinguishing feature is their feathered neck.

Vigo is thought to have flown over the English Channel at the end of June and came from central Europe, where there are only 600 to 1,000 pairs in an area stretching from Spain to Russia.

Bearded vultures can also be found in the Caucasus between the Black and Caspian seas, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Tibet.