Vultures do the dirty work of keeping Texas pretty.
Art Madden has learned to love all the birds that soar and swim through San Antonio’s Brackenridge Park, where the retired insurance agent captures whistling ducks, green herons and other feathered residents and migrants with his camera.
That includes what many consider the foulest fowl on Earth, the black vulture.
“They’re needed,” said Madden, who’s snapped his share of the dark scavengers. “And they clean up what we mess up. Roadkill and everything else. That’s what their job is.”
It’s a dirty job, but some creature has had to do it long before sanitation crews. And while vultures have been called some of Mother Nature’s ugliest creations, they do a downright beautiful job of preserving ecosystems and preventing diseases from infecting humans and other animals.
“Like my grandmother used to tell me, pretty is as pretty does,” said Patsy Inglet, Bexar Audubon Society president. “And they do such a great service for us, cleaning up things that cause diseases.”
Inglet noted black vultures are just as common as turkey vultures in and around San Antonio, certainly in and around Brackenridge Park and the nearby San Antonio Zoo, where numerous black vultures perch on rails and pluck at trash.
Here’s a closer look at both the vultures.
Birds of a feather. The black vulture (Coragyps atratus) and turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) both live along the southeastern United States, from the lower half of Texas up to New Jersey, though the turkey vulture also soaks up the rays along the California coast.
Both vultures also inhabit much of Mexico as well as Central America and South America. And both birds favor grasslands, though you’ll find them on utility poles and around streets in urban environments, usually when there’s fresh dead meat to be had.
The difference is mostly in their heads. Black vultures sport dark, black-and-gray plumage with a bald, grayish-black head. Turkey vultures have lighter, browner plumage with a bald, red head. The bald heads prevent dead meat and other foods from sticking to their noggins.
They fly differently, too. Black vultures have a graceful flight pattern, with their broad wings snapped out wide like a baseball umpire signaling “safe,” per the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, while turkey vultures make wobbly circles in the sky with their wings raised in a V. Black vultures have around a 5-foot wingspan while turkey vultures have a 6-foot wingspan.
Don’t call them buzzards. Madden learned this the hard way while out one time with other bird enthusiasts. Contrary to popular misuse, the term “buzzard” actually is a word in Europe people use for large birds of prey such as hawks, Inglet said. New World settlers gave vultures the misnomer because the birds resembled the hawks of Europe.
Don’t call them hunters, either. Turkey vultures are the only scavenger birds that don’t kill their prey, though black vultures do occasionally — but rarely — kill what they eat. Black vultures have been known to kill smaller live prey, including opossums, skunks and even young livestock.
But Inglet stressed vultures are scavengers that mostly ignore the living. The image of vultures circling a lost soul in the desert waiting for him to die is just the stuff of bad Westerns.
They’re actually picky eaters. Vultures like their dead meat fresh, usually a day old or less. “They prefer something that’s been freshly killed because it doesn’t have the bacteria overload,” Inglet said.
That said, vultures’ iron constitutions protect them and, by extension, the environment.
Vultures’ strong stomach acid enables them to eat animal corpses that often are infected with anthrax, botulism and other diseases that would sicken or kill most other creatures, including humans. Vultures remove that threat when they pluck that dead animal off the ground, thereby preserving a healthy ecosystem.
Black vultures need nose help. Turkey vultures have the largest olfactory system of all birds and can smell rotting flesh from more than a mile away. Black vultures have great eyesight but a lousy sense of smell, so often they’ll follow their redheaded cousins to roadkill or other carrion.
Black vultures are bullies.
Turkey vultures may be bigger than black vultures, but turkey vultures tend to fly and feed solo. Hence a group of black vultures often will drive off a turkey vulture from a carcass.
“If a turkey vulture finds a carcass first, they get in there and really eat fast,” Inglet said.
They don’t have a voice box. Turkey vultures as well as black vultures lack a syrinx, the vocal organ for birds, so they grunt or hiss.
They live relatively long lives. Black vultures live as long as 25 years, while turkey vultures live around 20 years.
They strike a horaltic pose. Black vultures and turkey vultures often stand with their wings spread out in what’s called a horaltic pose to dry their wings and warm their bodies.
They “nest” on the ground.
Black vultures and turkey vultures both nest on the ground, usually in caves, hollow trees and abandoned buildings, but they don’t build actual nests.
A clutch of cuties. Both vulture species usually lay a clutch of two eggs, with downy hatchlings that look nothing like their parents. “Their little babies are adorable,” Inglet said. “Little white fuzzy things.”
They have the lawon their side. Black vultures and turkey vultures are federally protected by the Migratory Treaty Act of 1918, which makes it illegal to capture or kill them.
Vultures do unspeakable things with their bodily expulsions. You might want to put down that coffee before reading this one. Black vultures and turkey vultures vomit when threatened, warding off predators with an expulsion that smells even worse than what they woofed down. Oh, and turkey vultures also urinate and defecate on their own legs to keep cool.
Pop culture depicts these very good birds as villains.
Most vultures in cartoons and other pop culture works resemble the Andean condor, the large black vulture in South America with a ruff of white feathers around its neck. Those pop culture vultures include the villainous thief Adrian Toomes, aka the Vulture from Marvel’s comic books and the film “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” and the Beatles-esque vultures Buzzy, Dizzy, Flaps and Ziggy from Walt Disney’s animated classic, “The Jungle Book.”
Have a heart for Mother Nature’s cleanup crew. Inglet said if you see a vulture doing its job near the edge of the road, please give it some room. The last thing you want is a scared vulture flying into your car.