Nature’s carnivorous clean-up crew are not as gross as you think

We humans sometimes assign our own values to wild animals’ behaviors, and while it isn’t intentional, this really isn’t fair. 

 

A snake eating the eggs and newly hatched babies from a bird’s nest (my daughter, Claire, and I once encountered this at our home) isn’t “mean.”

 

A coyote chasing down a rabbit isn’t “cruel.”

 

And scavengers feasting on a roadside deer carcass aren’t being “gross.”

 

Well, maybe that’s a little gross – but, my point is that wild animals behaving naturally shouldn’t lower our appreciation for them. Still, if I polled our readers about their three favorite birds, I’d bet not one would name either buzzards or vultures.

 

The first twist in our conversation is that we don’t have buzzards here. Nevermind Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, or Buzzards Roost, South Carolina. You won’t find buzzards in our country.

 

Buzzards and turkey buzzards are simply colloquialisms for Cathartes aura, the turkey vulture, and Coragyps atratus, the black vulture, respectively.

 

Real buzzards are Old World raptors resembling some of our hawk species, and they generally catch live prey. Turkey vultures, our most common vultures, are named in part for their red, featherless heads, which resemble those of turkeys. The slightly smaller and darker-colored black vultures are frequently seen here, too, and can often be found trying to outnumber and run off their larger cousins once a carcass is located.

 

Both species range throughout most of North, Central, and South America. Groups can often be seen circling high overhead, where their superb eyesight – estimated at eight times as sharp as human vision by the San Diego Zoo – and a highly developed sense of smell (more developed in the turkey vulture than in the black vulture) aid them in finding the corpses on which they feed.

 

Turkey vultures are very large birds with black vultures being slightly smaller. Both are larger than our largest hawk, the red-tailed hawk. Black vultures and turkey vultures have wingspans of nearly five feet and almost six feet, respectively!

 

Besides their senses of smell and incredible vision, vultures have a couple more unusual qualities. The birds have no vocal structures and can only hiss or whine softly. Also, the acid in their stomachs is so acidic, and their immune systems are so strong, that they can safely eat almost anything. Consuming carcasses contaminated with botulism, rabies, anthrax, cholera, or salmonella is all in a day’s work for a vulture, without needing so much as a TUMS!

 

This is a great benefit to the environment. Not only do these birds locate carcasses quickly, but they safely remove biological hazards that might infect, harm, or kill less tolerant species.

 

While vultures sometimes feed and roost around humans, they are reclusive nesters. They will nest in tree hollows, caves, crevices, thickets, animal burrows, or even abandoned barns.

 

Pairs will typically have one brood per year consisting of one to three hatchlings. The young will stay in the nest for 70 to 80 days before heading out to join in on Mother Nature’s airborne sanitation program.

 

And whether we find what vultures do “gross” or not, it makes our world a cleaner, safer place to live.