Various behaviours have been seen with most local birds: flying, perching or swimming. However, I have only ever seen vultures in the air — never roosting or feeding. This is odd.
This is one of five Turkey Vultures circling over farmers’ fields. What were they eyeing?
Perhaps a dead carcass that has not yet “ripened”. Vultures like their meat aged a bit longer than we do and not in an air conditioned cooler. I noticed this when working in the Okanagan, when one morning I passed a dead, bloated, mildly scented cow with vultures circling overhead. Returning by the same route in the afternoon, the stink of rotting flesh drew my attention to the vultures now ripping the flesh off the bones of said cow.
Tom, I wonder if such a ripe carcass is tastier or just easier to tear apart and swallow.
I have seen them roosting twice, once on a post and once in a tree. I got a not great photo of the tree rooster but didn’t have my camera with me for the other. It was much closer too. Lesson learned. 🙂
i saw one on the Paulsen the other day, on the road shoulder, arguing with some ravens over who had first dibs on some road kill.
A few years ago I saw a couple feeding on a deer carcase next to Hwy 3 south of Salmo. Before then I had no sense of how large they are.
I was reading where the Turkey Vulture can smell a carcass from a great distance and they will vomit on another species to keep them away from a carcass and that the smell from the vomit takes a very long time to disappear.