The turkey vulture has a distinctive two toned wing when flying.
The Turkey Vulture is a common bird in the Rocky Mountains. These 8 facts will help you get to know these birds better, including why their head is bald.
During the summer it is a common sight to see Turkey Vultures soaring high up in the sky. I’ve spent a lot of time in the outdoors looking up into the sky and just watching these big birds soar on the air currents. It would be so cool to be able to soar through the sky like that. Well, I wanted to share some information with you about these birds to help you better appreciate them.
8 Turkey Vulture Facts
Many raptors have outstanding eyesight that helps them to spot prey from great distances. The Turkey Vulture may be a raptor, but it doesn’t use its eyes to find food. It is a scavenger, meaning that its eats the carcasses and rotting flesh of dead animals. These birds have an extremely good sense of smell. They are able to smell rotting flesh from miles away!
This is a very large bird, averaging 28 inches tall. Their wingspan, at 6 feet, is one of the largest of all birds in North America. Only the Bald Eagle has a broader wingspan (up to 7 feet).
It is hard to identify birds when they are soaring high up in the sky. Fortunately, this vulture has a very distinctive coloring on the bottom of its wings that makes it easy to tell apart from others. The bottom of its wings are two colors. They appear dark towards the front edge and body. The feathers at the edges are whitish or light in color.
One easy way to tell apart a vulture from other birds is the fact that there are no feathers on the birds head. It has a red head and a sharp bill that it uses to tear off chunks of meat from the dead animals it finds.
Why do these vultures really have no feathers on their head?
I learned that vultures have no feathers on their heads for sanitary purposes. In other words it is easier to keep their heads clean. They are always putting their head into carcasses to eat food and the lack of feathers makes it easy to keep clean. However, recent research indicates that may not be correct. They may have no feathers on their head as a way to help them regulate their body temperature. It is easy for them to lose heat from their head with no feathers to keep them from overheating.
Most birds are very good at communicating by making a variety of chirps or songs. Yet again, the turkey vulture proves it’s unique. It can’t sing or chirp like other birds. Instead it is mostly silent or sometimes will grunt or hiss.
These birds will roost with lots of others at night in the treetops.
During the day this vulture spends most of its time alone looking for food. At night it gathers in large communal roosts with up to a hundred other vultures.
There are a lot of pretty gross facts about turkey vultures. I don’t want to get into too many of them, but will share one final one. They sometimes go to the bathroom on their own legs! It is thought that they do this as a way to cool off when it is very hot outside.