I always enjoy hearing from my readers about the unusual (or even ordinary) plants and animals they encounter while in the great outdoors. I often receive photos asking for an identification of the subject in the picture. Occasionally, I even know the answer.
I have received ID requests for wildflowers, tree leaves and other plants. I got an email from a friend with a picture of an animal he photographed somewhere in our far southern states (or maybe it was South America). I was able to immediately tell him it was a coatimundi, a relative of our raccoon. Insect pictures often show up on my computer.
I also get bird pictures. One was a gorgeous close-up picture of an eagle on the ground in Falls Park. My latest was from a lady in Greenfield, who sent me one of several vultures roosting in a tree in her town. Which leads me to the following column.
First, I want to thank the reader who sent me this picture. Because of it, I started doing some research. While much information can be easily found online, most of my research is done in my own library. I earned a degree in wildlife management from Purdue back in 1970. I have more reference books on outdoor topics than many public libraries. And, I can usually find what I am looking for quickly because I have used these books so many times during the past 50 years.
I had always thought vultures and buzzards were two different critters. Actually, I was partly right. We often use the two names interchangeably. But, in North America, the big, soaring birds we see feeding on roadkill are turkey vultures.
Generally speaking, our country has no buzzards. Buzzards are common in Europe and some other countries, but the turkey vulture is no longer there. Since fossils of these birds show them to be millions of years old, and their family tree has branched so many times, it would take a trained ornithologist to differentiate many of the species that exist today.
While our common turkey vulture is an ugly bird (compared to a cardinal or goldfinch), it has been around for eons to perform one task — to remove carrion or dead animals, before they can become a health hazard. Not one of the most glamorous jobs, but a necessary one.
Probably all of us have seen vultures soaring above us, rocking slightly from side to side, without flapping their wings. Their long wings, up to six feet wide, are dark on the front and lighter on the rear of the underside. They have a long tail, making the bird more than two feet in length.
Their head, however, is small for their body size. It has no feathers on the head to prevent a mess when it is consuming a dead body. The head is red in the adults, while gray in the younger birds. While most birds have a call or song of some kind, vultures are usually quiet, except when dining, when they sometimes hiss or grunt.
This large bird can be found across Canada from British Columbia to eastern Canada, down through most of the United States and well into South America. They roost, migrate and feed in groups, apparently willing to share their meals with complete strangers.
When nesting, if it can be called that, they lay a couple of whitish eggs with brown markings in a hollow tree in a rock crevice with no nest material. While both sexes look alike, the females are generally larger. They have a heavy, sharp, hooked beak for tearing flesh, and strong, curved talons for holding it.
The turkey vulture has only two close relatives in our country, and neither is common. One is the black vulture, which lives in the deep south of the United States, while the other is the California condor, which was almost extinct at one time but is slowly making a comeback. The American eagle, which a big, meat-eating bird, is not related to the vultures.
The next time you see one of these birds in the middle of the road, you will know a little more about it.
The author may be reached at [email protected].
