El buitre está lejos.

In Spanish, singular countable nouns usually need an article when you mean the or a/an.

• el buitre = the vulture
• un buitre = a vulture

So El buitre está lejos sounds natural for The vulture is far away.
Saying just Buitre está lejos would normally sound incomplete or unnatural in standard Spanish.

Buitre is masculine, so it takes el in the singular:

• el buitre
• los buitres

If you want to specify a female vulture biologically, Spanish often still keeps the grammatical noun masculine and adds context, for example el buitre hembra. The important point for this sentence is that buitre is grammatically masculine.

Because Spanish uses estar for location and many temporary states.

Here, lejos describes where something is in relation to something else or in space, so Spanish uses estar:

• El buitre está lejos. = It is far away.

Using ser here would not sound right in normal Spanish.
A good rule is:

• ser = identity, essential characteristics
• estar = location, condition, state

So for physical location or distance, use estar.

The accent mark is important because it distinguishes está from esta.

• está = is / he-she-it is from estar
• esta = this (feminine), as in esta casa

So in this sentence, the accent tells you it is the verb form, not a demonstrative word.

Here, lejos is an adverb, not an adjective.

It means far or far away and does not change for gender or number:

• El buitre está lejos.
• La casa está lejos.
• Los niños están lejos.

It stays lejos every time.

That is different from an adjective like lejano / lejana, which does agree:

• un lugar lejano
• una tierra lejana

But in this sentence, after estar, Spanish normally uses lejos, not lejano.

Because lejos does not behave like an adjective here. It is an adverb, so it does not change form.

Compare:

• El buitre está lejos.
• La montaña está lejos.

The word lejos stays the same.

English learners sometimes expect agreement everywhere, but Spanish only has agreement where the word type requires it. Adverbs do not agree.

Yes, absolutely. That is a very common pattern.

• lejos = far
• muy lejos = very far

Other common combinations are:

• bastante lejos = quite far
• tan lejos = so far
• más lejos = farther/further

So El buitre está muy lejos is a perfectly natural expansion of the sentence.

Use lejos de.

Examples:

• El buitre está lejos de aquí. = The vulture is far from here.
• El buitre está lejos del pueblo. = The vulture is far from the village.

Notice:

• de + el = del

So:

• lejos de el pueblo ❌
• lejos del pueblo ✅

Usually no. In a normal sentence like this, Spanish needs the article:

• El buitre está lejos. ✅

Without it, the sentence usually sounds wrong or very unnatural. Spanish generally uses articles more consistently than English with singular countable nouns.

The normal order is:

• El buitre = subject
• está = verb
• lejos = adverb/complement

So it follows the common Spanish pattern:

Subject + Verb + Complement

You might hear other word orders in special contexts, but El buitre está lejos is the neutral, standard way to say it.

In Spain, buitre is pronounced approximately like BWEE-treh.

A few notes:

• bui- is one syllable with a glide, roughly bwee
• the tr is pronounced with a Spanish t plus a tapped/flapped r
• the final e is pronounced clearly, not silent

A rough English-friendly guide is:

BWEE-treh

Not as a strong rolled rr. In buitre, the r is a single r, so in most Spanish accents it is a light tap.

So it is closer to a quick flap than a long roll.

• r = light tap
• rr = stronger rolled sound

Since buitre has only one r, use the lighter sound.

Not normally in this situation. For simple distance or location, Spanish strongly prefers:

• El buitre está lejos.

Lejano is an adjective and is used in different kinds of expressions, often more descriptive or literary, for example:

• un país lejano = a distant country
• un recuerdo lejano = a distant memory

But for is far away, estar + lejos is the natural choice.

The article and verb change, but lejos stays the same:

• El buitre está lejos.
• Los buitres están lejos.

So:

• el → los
• está → están
• lejos stays lejos

This is a good example of how the subject and verb agree, while the adverb does not change.