The Turkey Vulture – The True Harbinger of Spring!
I took this photo this morning – a Turkey Vulture at the side of our house right at the edge of the lake. When I see Turkey Vultures soaring high up in the sky, I always think of them as black birds, but you can see in this photo that is a trick of light and shadows. Turkey Vultures are black with a fair amount of brown. And quite interesting heads.
Turkey Vultures begin to migrate back to the northern states in late February through mid-March – here in central Illinois, they have been trickling back since the last week in February. Since many robins in our central states and in the southern parts of our northern states no longer migrate, when you see these vultures’ large, dark, wobbly silhouettes soaring in the skies, you know spring has truly arrived!
If you watch a Turkey Vulture for any length of time, you will notice that once the bird gets air-born and is comfortable, it will stop flapping its wings and will stay aloft using thermals to just soar and soar. There have been studies done as to how these birds can stay aloft for such long periods of time with very little or no flapping of wings. These tests show that the shape and size of the wings relative to the weight and size of the body allow these birds to literally sail. And while the general conclusion is that without a thermal or the flapping of its wings, a Turkey Vulture will drop about 2 feet per second, the air in almost all thermals rises at a faster rate and this keeps the bird aloft.
All birds, regardless of size, prefer to take off into the wind. Wind speed and direction is as important to them as it is to any human pilot. And the heavier the bird, the more important this is. You can observe this by watching Canada Geese. Take some time to sit and watch these geese and you will see how they always take off into the wind, how they use their legs to give them a start and that there is great effort involved in getting air-born. You can almost feel the strain of their muscles and the power of their wings. This is the same principle that governs why all aircraft take off into the wind. Turkey Vultures can struggle a bit to get off the ground and it can get them killed.
Turkey Vultures eat carrion and one of their places to feed is on the side of the road. Turkey Vultures are like most creatures – we can get closer to them in our cars than we can on foot. Most animals have little or no understanding of vehicles which is one of the reasons why there is so much roadkill. It takes a Turkey Vulture longer to comprehend danger from a car than from a person walking, so the bird is slower to bolt or flush. When you are in your car, you can often get fairly close to one before it attempts to take off.
A Turkey Vulture does not have a rapid take-off like a robin does. This vulture unfolds its large wings and sometimes takes a hop or 2 while laboriously flapping to get going. It takes a moment or two for this bird to get airborne and depending on wind direction, to get enough altitude to clear your car. Compare this to a Robin who seems to be on the ground one moment and in a tree the next. For a comparison to help you better understand the strength, coordination and effort it takes for a Turkey Vulture to get off the ground, the average Turkey Vulture weighs about 4 pounds – 64 ounces. A robin weighs less than 3 ounces. No wonder the Turkey Vulture needs time to get started and to take off into the wind to provide some lift under those big wings. Now you can understand that feeding by the roadside can be a dangerous business for Turkey Vultures. If you see vultures feeding at the side of the road and it is safe, try to give them as wide a berth as you can and slow down.
Before reading this, you probably already knew that vultures eat carrion – dead things. And we should be thanking them every day for their efforts. Can you imagine our world if there were no creatures that ate dead things? There would be half rotting corpses everywhere! The stench. The disease. The grotesque, rotting piles. There are no funeral directors in nature. Vultures are big birds, and they help dispose of a lot of creatures who have died. And when they are finished, others come along and take care of what is left. This is an absolutely necessary part of life and these birds should be treasured for their role.
The next time you look up into the sky and see a large dark bird soaring and soaring – seemingly to its heart’s content – and wobbling – proudly point and say with great authority, “That is a Turkey Vulture, the true harbinger of spring!”