Turkey vulture

A large, dark soaring bird with a bare red head, circling on thermals over open country, using one of the sharpest noses of any bird.

  • Turkey vultures on a fence rail — one sunning with its wings spread open.Rhododendrites
  • A turkey vulture at rest, showing the bare skin of its head.Félix Uribe

Turkey vulture at a glance

Cathartes aura Cathartes aura is kuh-THAR-teez OR-uh

Type
Bird · raptor
Diet
Carnivore
Size
Its wings stretch up to 6 feet across (1.8 m), wider than most kitchen counters are long, on a body just over 2 feet long — most of that wingspan, not much of it bird.
Lifespan
The oldest turkey vulture on record caught during bird-banding studies had reached at least 16 years and 10 months.
Conservation
Least concern

Eats carrion, dead animals of almost any kind

It finds food almost entirely by smell, flying low over the land and circling upwind through a scent plume until it reaches the source. It is immune to the botulism bacteria that make rotting meat dangerous to most other animals.

Should you worry?

None directly — it eats only dead animals and avoids people. If a young one is startled on the ground near its nest, it may hiss and vomit as a defense, so leave any vulture, chick or adult, alone and give it space.

In the 1930s, an oil company chasing a leak in an underground gas pipeline started paying attention to birds instead of digging up the ground. Natural gas has no smell of its own, so the company had already begun lacing it with a foul-smelling chemical, mercaptan, just so people could detect a leak. What they noticed next was that turkey vultures kept circling and gathering directly over the leaks — as if something down there smelled exactly like dinner.

It did, to a vulture. Mercaptan is close enough to the smell of rotting meat that a turkey vulture’s nose, one of the sharpest in the bird world, reads a gas leak as carrion. Crews learned to watch for a kettle of vultures circling a stretch of empty pipeline and dig there, and companies sometimes added extra mercaptan to hard-to-search sections just to draw the birds in. The turkey vulture’s whole feeding strategy runs on this: fly low, catch the edge of a scent plume, and circle upwind through it until the smell gets strong enough to lead straight to the source, whether that source is a carcass or a crack in a pipe.

That nose is also why a turkey vulture can eat things almost nothing else safely can — its gut shrugs off the botulism bacteria that make old carrion dangerous to most animals. A bird built to specialize in what everything else avoids doesn’t need camouflage or speed. It just needs to keep circling until the smell tells it where to land.

Did you know?

  • A turkey vulture's sense of smell is so precise that scientists have measured it detecting certain scents at just a few parts per billion in the air.
  • A group of turkey vultures flying together is a "kettle," a group resting in trees is a "committee," and a group feeding on a carcass is a "wake."
  • When threatened, a turkey vulture can vomit its last meal at an attacker — the smell drives predators off, and losing the weight helps the bird take flight faster.

Common questions

Are turkey vultures dangerous to kids?

No. They eat only dead animals and stay away from people. A startled chick may hiss and vomit, so it's best to leave any vulture alone rather than approach it.

How do turkey vultures find dead animals?

Mostly by smell. They fly low and circle upwind through the scent until they reach the source — a sense so sharp that gas companies once used vulture activity to find leaks in underground pipelines.

Why does a turkey vulture have a bare red head?

A feathered head would get messy and infected from feeding inside carcasses. Bare skin is easier to keep clean, and it's also where the bird's name comes from — the red, featherless head resembles a turkey's.

Why do turkey vultures sit with their wings spread open?

To dry off, warm up in the morning sun, or bake bacteria off their feathers after feeding.

What do turkey vultures eat?

Only dead animals. They can safely eat carrion that would sicken most other animals because they're immune to botulism.

Where it lives

Where we got this