Turkey vulture

• 1. Introduction

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  A male turkey vulture named Lord Richard lives at the Lindsay Wildlife Experience in Walnut Creek, California. As of 2025 he is 51 years old, the oldest captive bird of his species on record in the source. He hatched in 1974 at the Randall Museum in San Francisco and arrived at Lindsay Wildlife later that same year.

  Lord Richard belongs to Cathartes aura, a bird that most people have seen without really looking. It drifts over highways, pastures and deserts, tilting from side to side and almost never flapping. It eats the dead, it has a bare red head, and it cannot sing a note.

  That plain description leaves a lot unexplained. Why does a vulture carry the name of a farmyard fowl? How does a bird find a carcass hidden beneath the trees? And why do other, more powerful vultures trail behind it?

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• 2. Names and Ancestry

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  In 1758, in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, Carl Linnaeus described the bird as Vultur aura. He summed it up in Latin as brown-gray, with black wing flight feathers and a white beak. The common name came later and is a comparison. An adult's bald red head and dark plumage look like those of a male wild turkey. The word vulture comes from the Latin vulturus, meaning tearer, a nod to how the bird eats.

  North Americans often call it a buzzard or a turkey buzzard. That label travels badly, because in the Old World a buzzard is a hawk of the genus Buteo. In parts of the Caribbean the bird goes by John crow or carrion crow.

  The family Cathartidae holds seven New World vultures. The turkey vulture shares the genus Cathartes with the greater yellow-headed vulture and the lesser yellow-headed vulture. Like the rest of its family, it has a diploid chromosome number of 80.

  Where these birds belong on the family tree has been argued for generations. Some earlier authorities saw New World vultures as kin of storks. Others placed them in the order Accipitriformes beside the Old World vultures, or gave them their own order, Cathartiformes.

  Recent genetic studies reject a link to falcons and a link to storks. They place both vulture groups as basal members of the clade Afroaves. Old World vultures sit in several groups within Accipitridae, the family of eagles, kites and hawks. New World vultures form a sister group to Accipitriformes, which also holds the osprey and the secretarybird.

  The two vulture groups look alike because of convergent evolution. They descend from different ancestors that lived in different parts of the world, then settled into similar ecological roles. The two yellow-headed cousins in the turkey vulture's own genus share a talent that sets the group apart, and that talent shapes every carcass the family eats.

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• 3. Range and Subspecies

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  Across an estimated 28,000,000 square kilometres, roughly 18,000,000 turkey vultures hold territory. That makes it the most widely distributed vulture in the Americas. It rivals the black vulture as the most abundant raptorial bird in the world. Its range runs from southern Canada to Cape Horn. In the southern United States it stays all year, while northern birds may migrate as far as South America.

  It favors open ground that sits next to woodland, since trees serve for nesting and roosting. Dense, enclosed forest is a poor fit because it can hamper takeoff. Hills and low mountains suit it better, as they make catching a rising current easier. It is often missing from completely treeless places, such as parts of the prairies and the Great Plains.

  Pastureland and other low-input farmland are key habitat for foraging and roosting. Around row crops, by contrast, the birds mostly appear as passing flyovers. Cities see them regularly, mainly outside the breeding season, but the turkey vulture is far less routine in urban areas than the black vulture is in the tropics and subtropics.

  In Uruguay, the bird's crow-like look helped name the Quebrada de los Cuervos, or Crows Ravine. There it lives alongside the lesser yellow-headed vulture and the black vulture.

  Five subspecies are recognized. The nominate form, C. a. aura, is called the Antillean turkey vulture. It is the smallest, and it lives from Mexico south through South America and the Greater Antilles. C. a. jota, the Chilean turkey vulture, is larger, browner and slightly paler than the tropical form. It ranges from the Andes of Colombia to southern Argentina.

  The western form carries a tangled naming history. A subspecies called teter was identified by Friedman in 1933. In 1964 Alexander Wetmore separated the western birds, which took the older name meridionalis, first applied to a migrant from South America. They breed from southern Manitoba and southern British Columbia south to Baja California, and they migrate farther than any other subspecies.

  C. a. ruficollis, the tropical turkey vulture, is darker and blacker, with a dull red head and neck. Adults often show a pale yellow patch on the crown. It lives from Panama through Uruguay and Argentina, and on the island of Trinidad. C. a. septentrionalis, the eastern form, ranges from southeastern Canada through the eastern United States and rarely winters south of the border.

  In South America the western migrants arrive on ground already held by the smaller Antillean form, and the two overlap there.

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• 4. Following the Scent

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  Ethyl mercaptan is a gas given off at the first stage of decay, and the turkey vulture hunts by it. Smell is an uncommon skill among birds. The vulture flies low to catch the scent, and the part of its brain that processes odor is large compared with that of many other animals. This lets it find carrion beneath a forest canopy that would hide a carcass from sight.

  The ability looks especially striking next to its relatives. King vultures, black vultures and condors cannot smell carrion at long range, so they follow turkey vultures to the food. Other members of the family Cathartidae were once believed to have no sense of smell at all. Newer research suggests they can smell at short distances.

  The menu runs from mice and shrews up to large grazing animals. The vulture prefers animals that have died recently and avoids carcasses that have reached putrefaction. It rarely kills, and when it does the victims are small, weak or very sick, such as bird eggs, nestlings and reptiles. Roadkill draws it to roadsides, and washed-up fish draw it to the water. It also takes fish, tadpoles and insects stranded in shallow water, and it sometimes visits rubbish dumps.

  Its tastes stretch further than most people expect. It has been recorded eating pumpkin, grape, juniper and coconut. In South America it has been photographed eating the fruit of the introduced oil palm. It has also eaten the dung of coyotes, sea lions and domestic animals. By clearing carrion, it removes what would otherwise breed disease.

  The king vulture and both kinds of condor outrank the turkey vulture at a carcass. They make the first cut into the skin, which matters because the turkey vulture's weaker bill cannot tear the hides of large animals. The turkey vulture, in turn, usually arrives first, or alongside the yellow-headed vultures. It displaces those two species thanks to its larger size. Biologists describe the arrangement as mutual dependence between species.

  Black vultures are more aggressive. Their feeding frenzy seems to intimidate turkey vultures, which cannot mount a frenzy of their own even in numbers. Pairs and single birds often share a carcass peacefully. In Peru, turkey vultures beat black vultures in 56% of encounters, perhaps because black vultures there are smaller.

  Some smaller raptors still bully the turkey vulture. Red-tailed hawks, Harris's hawks, Buteogallus black hawks, peregrine falcons and crested caracaras dive-bomb it or use other intimidation displays to take over carrion or perches. Bald eagles in Florida easily dominate it. In the tropics the order flips for Swainson's hawks and the yellow-headed caracara, both subservient to it. It outranks crows at a carcass but gives way to the common raven.

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• 5. Built for Soaring

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  A wingspan of 160 to 182 centimetres, possibly up to 200, carries a body that weighs between 0.8 and 2.41 kilograms. Length runs from 62 to 81 centimetres. Size follows latitude. Birds at the northern edge of the range average larger than those of the neotropics. A sample of 124 Florida birds averaged 2 kilograms, while 65 and 130 birds from Venezuela averaged 1.22 and 1.45 kilograms. Males and females look the same in plumage and color and are similar in size.

  The body feathers are mostly brownish-black. Beneath the wings the flight feathers look silvery-gray against darker wing linings. The adult head is small and red, with few feathers or none. The beak is short, hooked and ivory-colored. The eyes have gray-brown irises, one incomplete row of lashes on the upper lid and two rows on the lower. The legs and feet are pink-skinned.

  Its nostrils are perforate and have no dividing septum, so from the side a person can see straight through the beak. A young bird has a gray head with a black beak tip, and the colors shift to the adult pattern as it matures. Adults molt gradually from late winter or early spring until early autumn. Leucistic individuals turn up now and then, and people sometimes wrongly call them albino.

  The feet tell a different story from those of hunting raptors. The two front toes are long, with small webs at their bases, and the toes follow the anisodactyl pattern. The feet are flat and relatively weak, and the talons are blunt and poor at grasping. Tracks measure 9.5 to 14 centimetres long and 8.2 to 10.2 centimetres wide, claw marks included.

  On the ground the vulture is clumsy, walking with an ungainly hop. Takeoff costs real effort, with flapping wings and a push off the ground. Once it climbs, the effort ends. It holds its wings in a shallow V and rocks from side to side, and light striking the gray flight feathers makes them flash silver. This is static soaring, in which the bird flaps rarely and rides rising thermals.

  In the air, the long, slim tail separates it from the black vulture. The black vulture has a shorter tail and shorter wings and looks smaller, even though the two species have about the same body mass. The turkey vulture also lacks a syrinx, the bird's vocal organ. All it can produce are hisses and grunts.

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• 6. Roost Habits

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  Several hundred turkey vultures may gather at a single community roost, sometimes with black vultures among them. They break away by day to forage alone. Favorite perches include dead, leafless trees and low-density conifers. Man-made structures such as water towers and microwave towers also serve. At night the vulture lowers its body temperature by about 6 degrees Celsius to 34 degrees, which leaves it slightly hypothermic.

  A vulture standing with its wings spread wide is in the horaltic stance. Researchers believe the pose serves several purposes: drying the wings, warming the body and baking off bacteria. Birds hold it more often after damp or rainy nights. New World vultures, Old World vultures and storks all do the same.

  Like storks, the turkey vulture often defecates on its own legs. As the water in the droppings evaporates, it cools the blood vessels in the bare tarsi and feet. The process is called urohidrosis, and it leaves the legs streaked with white uric acid.

  Few animals prey on an adult, and those that do take them quite rarely. In descending order of likelihood, fledglings, immature birds and adults may fall to great horned owls, golden eagles, bald eagles and possibly red-tailed hawks. Foxes occasionally ambush an adult, and dogs sometimes kill one. Eggs and nestlings face raccoons and opossums, and animals that can climb are likelier to raid a nest than to catch an adult.

  The main defense is vomit. A vulture throws up semi-digested meat with a foul smell, which deters most raiders. If the predator is close enough, the vomit stings its face or eyes. Sometimes the vulture must empty its crop of a heavy, undigested meal just to get airborne and escape. The same weapon belongs to chicks, which hiss and vomit at intruders while still in the nest.

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• 7. Nests and Chicks

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  In the southern United States the breeding season opens in March, peaks from April to May and runs into June. Farther north it starts later and stretches into August. Courtship has two forms. On the ground, several birds gather in a circle and hop around its edge with wings partly spread. In the air, one bird follows another closely, flapping and diving.

  The nest is barely a nest. Eggs go on a bare surface in a sheltered place: a cliff, cave, rock crevice, burrow, hollow tree or thicket. Caves are used only in the breeding season, and the vulture enters them for no other purpose. A female usually lays two eggs, sometimes one and rarely three. They are cream-colored, with brown or lavender spots around the larger end.

  Both parents incubate, and the eggs hatch after 30 to 40 days. The chicks are altricial, meaning they are helpless at birth. Both adults feed them by regurgitating food and tend them for 10 to 11 weeks. The young fledge at about nine to ten weeks.

  An adult that finds its nest threatened has three options. It may flee, regurgitate on the intruder or feign death. Family groups stay together until fall.

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• 8. Vultures and People

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  Nero hatched in 1974, was taken from his nest for research at the University of Wisconsin, and later became an education ambassador at Carpenter Nature Center in Hastings, Minnesota. In 1993 he joined the education department of the University of Minnesota's Raptor Center. He stayed their only educational vulture until he died in 2022 at the age of 47. In the wild, life expectancy ranges upward of 16 years, and the oldest wild banded bird was 16. A captive life span of more than 45 years is possible.

  Some cattle ranchers accuse the turkey vulture of carrying anthrax or hog cholera on its feet or bill. The hog cholera virus is actually destroyed as it passes through the vulture's digestive tract. Another suspicion comes from the black vulture, which attacks and kills newborn cattle. The turkey vulture does not kill live animals, but it mixes with black vulture flocks and scavenges what they leave. When a calf has been killed, its presence gives a false impression of danger.

  Vulture droppings can harm or kill trees and other vegetation. In captivity the bird can be fed fresh meat, and young birds will gorge if allowed.

  Human pollution poses a more serious risk. Contaminants may reduce brood success and fertility, and may harm individual health. Lead is a particular threat. Hunters using lead pellet ammunition leave contaminated carcasses, and a vulture that eats them absorbs toxic lead. Even at low levels, lead exposure is linked to disease, neurological damage and reproductive failure.

  The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 protects the species in the United States. Canada has the Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds, and Mexico has the Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds and Game Mammals. In the United States it is illegal to take, kill or possess a turkey vulture, its eggs or any of its parts, feathers included, without a permit. Violations can bring a fine of up to $100,000 for individuals or $200,000 for organizations, and a prison term of 1 year.

  The IUCN Red List rates the species as least concern, and populations appear stable. The line to watch is a decline of more than 30 percent in 10 years or three generations, the threshold for listing a species as threatened.

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