Wildlife Wednesday 04/09/2025

Happy #WildlifeWednesday!

You may have noticed more than the usual number of large dark birds circling and soaring in the sky overhead lately. Welcome back, Turkey Vultures!

While some Turkey Vultures stay in Ohio all year, most migrate for the winter, traveling to the southern USA and even as far as South America. Often associated with death and decay, the Turkey Vulture is a harbinger of spring!

A valuable member of nature’s cleanup crew, vultures eat carrion, which they locate using their sense of smell. Their stomachs are extremely acidic, which allows them to digest carasses tainted with rabies, anthrax, and tuberculosis. Without vultures, much more disease would spread from rotting dead animals.

Their red bald heads resembling that of a male Wild Turkey gave them the first part of their common name, while the word “vulture” comes from Latin, meaning to tear, referring to the bird’s scavenging feeding method. 

The head is featherless to prevent buildup of guts, entrails, maggots, and other distasteful things that might accumulate while feeding face-first in carcasses. Lacking the ability to sweat, when a vulture gets too hot, it defecates on its own legs, using evaporation of the water in the feces and urates as a cooling down strategy. Its primary means of defense is to projectile vomit foul-smelling, semi-digested rancid meat, an effective deterrent to pretty much all predators. 

While the previous paragraph may sound a bit gross, Turkey Vultures are relatively clean, gentle, and social creatures. They can often be seen standing nobly in the horaltic pose, perched high with their enormous wings spread wide, glowing in the sunshine. Not only does this stance look regal, in addition the vulture is using the heat of the sun to bake off ectoparasites and bacteria in its feathers.

Turkey Vultures are very social. They migrate in flocks that can number into the thousands and roost together at night in large communal groups, sometimes sharing a roosting space with Black Vultures as well. A group of perched vultures is referred to as a “committee” and while flying a “kettle.” When they are feeding together at a carcass the collective is called a “wake.”