Turkey Vultures

Cathartes aura

Order: Ciconiiformes
Family: Cathartidae
Genus: Cathartes

<>   Every creature plays a role in maintaining the balance in nature. Turkey vultures are “carrion” eaters, which means they scavenge the remains of dead animals. We often see them overhead, their broad v-shaped, five to six foot wingspan teetering effortlessly from side-to-side on rising thermals, like a kite in a gentle breeze, using their keen eyesight and highly developed sense of smell to locate the carcasses of recently deceased animals. Turkey vultures are related to black vultures, yellow-headed vultures and condors, and received their name, by the resemblance of their feather free heads and dark-feathered bodies to wild turkeys. Turkey vultures are also more closely related to storks and ibises than raptors.

    Contrary to popular belief, circling vultures are not always looking for a meal, but rather travel without flapping their wings, riding thermals up, before gliding in a gradual descent, to where a second thermal is detected, then repeating the process. In this manner, turkey vultures can fly without much flapping of the wings for up to six hours. A group of circling vultures, called a "kettle" (bubbles rising in boiling water?), is as often an indication as to where rising warm thermals are located, as to where an animal's carcass lies. Also contrary to popular belief, vultures are extremely shy and wary of people, don't follow dying animals, and will occasionally eat shoreline insects and vegetation. I've seen one of our turkey vultures, Ike, eat pumpkin and squash placed in the enclosure he shared with Lenoire, the Raven.

  Large groups of vultures, called "venues", are often seen roosting on the bare limbs of dead trees, spreading their wings to dry them after rain, or absorbing  heat, baking off the bacteria picked up during days spent with their heads in, and their bodies moving around, carcasses. Or, we may see them circling high over an area where the gases, most notably ethyl mercaptan, emitting from decaying carcasses, (and used to give odor to odorless and potentially dangerous gases like propane),  signal the presence of food.

Slightly larger than their more southerly cousin, the black vulture, which, with warming climate, is beginning to show up in the southern Adirondacks, the turkey vulture rarely kills its own prey, preferring to eat road kill, fish which have washed up on shore or any deceased creature whose carcass has not begun to putrefy. Yes, there are actually carcasses that are too putrid even for vultures, and attract a whole different group of scavengers! Also, vultures prefer the carcasses of herbivorous animals over those of carnivores.

  One way in which raptors differ from turkey vultures, is that raptors have a very limited sense of smell, which is why Great Horned Owls, for example, eat skunks. Smells are processed by the olfactory lobe of the brain, which is larger than normal in turkey vultures. Old world vultures have no sense of smell, but, like turkey vultures, have very acute eyesight, which they use to locate carcasses.

This is an example of convergent evolution, wherein two creatures who are unrelated, but evolve in environments which are distant, but share similar opportunities, i.e., large dead animals, end up filling essentially the same role, and develop similar attributes which make them come to resemble one another. The African vulture lives in an open area where it is easy to spot carrion from the air, while the turkey vulture lives in areas which include dense canopy, so smell becomes a key advantage. Since a vulture spends so much of its life with its head inside the carcass of an animal, natural selection has gradually removed the feathers from the head, as feathers would accumulate bacteria and bits of putrefying flesh. The merely asthetic tradeoff is the vulture's ghoulish appearance.

    Vultures have no syrinx, the vocal organ found in birds, so their vocalizations are limited to hisses and grunts. Also in distinction to raptors, turkey vultures have weak, almost flat feet, which can be used to stand on carrion, to keep it from shifting as they pick and tear at it with their short, ivory-colored beaks. As graceful as they appear when circling or gliding, the turkey vulture is quite awkward on the ground, alternately hopping and walking, and takeoffs are clumsy and laborious. A surprised vulture defends itself by vomiting up a noxious stew of undigested material, often emptying its crop, and often making it lighter to enable takeoff, while its pursuer may be distracted by the free meal offered by the vomited material.

<>    Mature vultures have few natural enemies, but immature vultures may be taken by eagles and great horned owls. Vultures spray their urea on their legs, and the evaporation of the fluids enables cooling, while the uric acids in their waste kill the bacteria which accumulates on their feet and legs.
  Two eggs are laid on the ground in a protected, scratched out depression, like on a  a cliff, in a cave, or in a hollow tree or abadoned barn, in April or May. Incubation lasts 38 to 41 days, and fledges leave the nest about 70 to 80 days after hatching. Vultures only have one brood per year. Vultures live about 16 years in the wild, and about 20 in captivity. Turkey vultures are protected under the International Migratory bird Treaty. Ike came to us from the Wild Center in Tupper Lake. Ike had to have a wing amputated at the wrist after being struck by a car. Turkey vultures are migrators, which is why Ike has a heat lamp in his "cave".