Nature Of Our Valley

25 Things You Didn’t Know about Turkey Vultures

Most Muddy River Valley residents recognize Turkey Vultures when they see them. In case their commonness makes one think they are uninteresting, here are 25 things you may not know about Turkey Vultures (also known as TVs).

1. What’s in a name – Buzzard or vulture? There are no vultures in England, so the first English colonists – think Jamestown – called

2. Closest relations: While vultures are found all around the world, the Old World species are related to hawks and eagles while our New World vultures including the Turkey Vulture are related to ibises and storks. Remember the ibis story in this paper a few weeks ago?

3. Phooey on flocks: A gathering of Turkey vultures is officially called a “venue”. How hi-falutin is that?

4. Here’s another term to sock away for your next Scrabble game. Valley residents have likely seen early morning TVs perched on fence posts, on the ground, or in trees with their wings spread out (see pictures). This is officially called the “horaltic pose” – it’s derived from old Latin “horal” for “of the hour”.

5. So what’s with horalting anyway? Various human hypotheses are that TVs do it a) as a pre-flight muscle warm up, b) a method of parasite control, or c) to dry the wings. But only they know for sure.

6. TVs have kettles. Well, they don’t carry them around, but they do form them. Turkey vultures congregate in early morning columns of warming and rising air, using updrafts to effortlessly transport them up to their cruising altitude. These congregations are called “kettles” because as they rise, the birds look like “bubbles in a kettle of boiling water”.

7. Picky eaters. Contrary to popular belief, Turkey vultures do NOT eat thoroughly rotten meat. Carcasses just a few days gone are just about right.

8. There must be something positive in a diet of carrion. TVs are one of the largest North American birds with 32″ long bodies and six foot wingspans.

9. And yet, there are no obese TVs. As big as they look, they keep their weight between 3.5 to 5 lbs. We should do so well.

10. Maybe it’s something they ate. No other animal is known to eat a TV – not even a coyote.

11. High fliers: TVs have been recorded soaring above 20,000 feet (that’s 3.7 miles above the ground or about twice the height of Mt. Charleston) and have no problem soaring more than 140 miles in one flight.

12. Easy riders. Someone with not enough to do watched to see how long TVs glided without flapping their wings and got up to 6 hours. At that point, it is not recorded whether the watched bird flapped its wings or the observer died.

13. TVs rock! Watch them glide and you’ll see they fly with their wings slightly elevated above their bodies, forming a V. By holding this position, their bodies effortlessly maintain an even keel by rocking back and forth even in the highest winds. In case you wanted to know, this flight shape is called a “dihedral”.

14. Like us, young and old dress differently. Unlike us, the young vultures are drab with grey skin on their heads, while the adults sport bright red skin.

15. Did I forget to say TV’s are bald-headed? Of course you knew that anyway. All vultures lack head feathers as an adaptation for eating carrion because feathers would catch meat and blood and cause B.O. and other problems. After finishing a meal, vultures perch in the sun to let any bits of the meal sticking to their heads dry and flake off. Hmmm, would that work for human infants?

16. It’s not been recorded whether a carrion diet gives TVs gas, but they’ve been used to detect gas leaks! Gas line operators discovered that TVs fly down to leaking gas lines, following the rotten meat scent that’s been added to gas. I know this is true because it was written on-line.

17. Yes, TVs have a rotten sense of smell. That is, it has been proven that TVs use smell to locate dead bodies. But not all vultures have this nosy talent- most depend on vision to find food.

18. Poor nesters. Turkey vultures are just too lazy to build a nest. They simply lay their eggs on the ground.

19. But, boy are they savvy nesters. Finding a TV nest is next to impossible. As evidence of this, hundreds of Nevadans participated in a statewide survey of nesting birds from 1998-2002 and while circumstantial evidence for TV nests were recorded for 221 sites, only 2 nests were actually found. This is because TVs usually “nest” in inaccessible rocky cliff areas – truly inaccessible.

20. TVs are social animals. From Warm Springs to Overton, TVs are well known for roosting for the night in flocks – er, I mean “venues” – in tall trees to which they return every night for weeks and months.

21. And they have another fidelity: While it is impossible for us to see, it has been determined that they mate for life.

22. Believe it or not, just as there are dog, cat, orchid, and other aficionados devoted to the things they love, there is an official Turkey Vulture Society. Do I sense disbelief? Look it up on-line. While it may not turn you into a TV lover, it is really a neat web site.

23. Long distance fliers: Turkey vultures occupy the widest range of any scavenging bird in North America. Their range encompasses the southern half of Canada to below the tip of Argentina.

24. Big water holds no fear: TVs make it far off the coast of Argentina in the Falkland Islands!

25. Forget Capistrano’s swallows – we’ve got Turkey Vultures over the Muddy. TVs reliably appear in our Valley in the first week of March and are gone south to their winter quarters in the first week of October.

Bruce Lund is a retired biologist with a life-long love of nature instilled by his grandparents and some remarkable teachers. He and his wife, Flo, have lived in Moapa since 1997.