Hey Juicelings,
Yesterday was International Vulture Awareness Day. Here’s one man’s paean to the noble scavengers:
“You can imagine if you breathe the air coming from a rotting deer on the side of the road or if were to wash into our water supply it could make you and I sick, but they’re able to eat that material and destroy, remove the toxic elements and help keep the Earth clean,” Joplin said….
If the fact that they act as key parts of nature’s cleaning crew isn’t good enough for you, Joplin says vultures are pretty much harmless.
“They’re not dangerous birds, they have no way of protecting themselves other than throwing up,” he said.
Sounds gross, but, when you think about it, says Joplin: “If you’re going to have an encounter with a wild animal, it’s probably better to be thrown up on than bit or clawed.”
“They clean the Earth, they eat the dead decaying and rotting material, toxic things,” Joplin said. “They’re helping to clean the earth by consuming that material, stuff that would make you or I ill.”
Can we have a bit of love for the less-photogenic among us? The French have a term for it: jolie laide.
This shoebill bird is also jolie laide, and beyond that, he’s rather polite. However, he’s also pretty scary looking. Am I the only one who gets the impression he thinks he’s bowing to his dinner? (No embed available; totally worth your time to click over.)
Baud
Absolutely. We all love Cole.
Kristine
The shoebill bow is sweet, for whatever reason. Even if it thinks the weird looking bird without feathers is looking for bugs, too.
Hillary Rettig
@Kristine: is that why it’s bowing? it sure looks social.
Hillary Rettig
@Baud: :-) actually I would say he’s one of the most photogenic blogmeisters around
RSA
I remember reading a science essay when I was a kid about vultures, how they climb to great heights on thermal updrafts, the keenness of their eyesight, and so forth. One thing that stuck with me was the reason they have bald heads: They’re sometimes sticking their heads directly into decaying animal carcasses, and if they had feathers, maggots and such getting under the feathers would be a problem. Gross, I know, but kinda cool.
Troublesome Carp fka Geeno
@Hillary Rettig: Especially with noise it makes at the end. This looks like something that means something to shoebills.
greennotGreen
Your vulture pic isn’t loading correctly in Firefox or Chrome on my Win10 laptop.
Many years ago I was walking in the fields back of my grandparents’ house when I came across a dozen or more turkey vultures roosting in the lower branches of the trees. When I disturbed them by rounding the corner, they took flight very close to me. They’re pretty durn big! And I think I may have said out loud (’cause I was certainly thinking it,) “Not me, not me! I’m alive!”
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
I saw a wild turkey grazing near the side of the road in NoVA ~ 6 pm yesterday. I was by it before I had a chance to stop and get a picture.
Amazing birds.
Cheers,
Scott.
Emma
They’re very graceful flyers.
raven
When I skeletonized my redfish head I used dermestid beetles. They come in after the vultures to clean the bones!
dedc79
I volunteered at a wild bird rehab center one summer during college. By far the most disgusting part of the job was cleaning up after the vultures. They’d string the rat and mouse guts out all over the ground and, because it was over 90 degrees out, we couldn’t just leave them there rotting. So I had to go in and scoop them up. I do not miss that.
greennotGreen
If anyone has seen the movie Epic (about a battle between a minute forest civilization of people, sentient flowers, mushrooms, slugs, etc. and the forces of decay which for some reason included bats,) were you disturbed that this was a battle at all? The forces of life and growth must be balanced by death and decay – otherwise you end up with an Earth so choked with plants and animals that life actually becomes impossible.
They really need some consulting biologists and ecologists in Hollywood.
Hillary Rettig
@RSA: *totally* gross but kinda cool!
Hillary Rettig
@greennotGreen: not sure what’s wrong with the pic – couldn’t fix it.
sounds like an awesome, if a bit scary, moment
Kristine
@Hillary Rettig: No idea. It does look social. But I have enough friends who are biologists etc who inform me that some of those sweet-looking critters in You Tube videos are actually terrified/think the human is food/trying to mate with the person’s shoe to assume I know what’s going on. May spend part of the day looking up shoebill articles.
Hillary Rettig
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I love wild turkeys so much. Saw a family with many babies off the side of the road the other day.
Hillary Rettig
@greennotGreen: will have to keep an eye out for that despite the scientific irregularities.
D58826
@Baud: Does that include GOOPERS?
Betty Cracker
That was my chief defense mechanism back in college. Got me out of many a jam!
evodevo
@Betty Cracker: LOL
OzarkHillbilly
Only a person who had never had such an encounter with a vulture would ever say that. If you thought it smelled bad going down, just wait until you smell it coming back up.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: That made me laugh. Thanx, I needed that.
evodevo
Uh, turkey vultures are harmless environmental janitors – black-headed buzzards, not so much. The black-headed ones have been moving into our region in Ky over the last few years, and are a growing livestock nuisance, killing newborn lambs and calves. They will approach the cow, distract her from the calf and proceed to peck its eyes out, and harass and peck it till it goes into shock and dies. Occasionally they will attack an adult cow. They have been observed in the act of pecking at the hooves of a calf before it was even out of the birth canal. They are smarter and much more aggressive than turkey buzzards, and obviously predatory.
Hillary Rettig
@dedc79: @raven: at college I had a job feeding bugs in an entomological lab. buried chicken parts for the carrion beetles and had to feed poor meal worms to a giant big-ass scary millipede. (Only time I ever felt sorry for a mealworm.)
But the most disgusting thing of all was cleaning up the two or three day old dog food that we fed to some of the other bugs. By then it was green and stank to all getup.
Hillary Rettig
@Kristine: yeah prob a lot of terror in those interactions. otoh that shoebill looks like he/she knows what’s what.
Hillary Rettig
@evodevo: ugh. nature really does suck a lot of the time.
greennotGreen
@evodevo: Sounds like a job for a livestock dog.
trollhattan
Here’s my contribution to Vulture Day. Enjoy breakfast.
maya
Have wild turkeys and turkey buzzards (+ any number of hawks and osprey) here in Nor Cal and by far my favorite are the turkey buzzards. They are probably the most energy efficient birds on earth. Very rarely do you see them flapping their wings, except on takeoff. They will cruise around on thermals all day long for no other reason than they can and they are superb flyers. Early in the mornings you will see squadrons of ravens flying up the highway looking for fresh road kill. Turkey buzzards sleep in and then make the same cruise up the highway looking out for the gaggle of ravens who have already located breakfast and will just drop in and help themselves like unwanted relatives. No rancor between species because there’s always plenty to go around and although the ravens will sometimes try to tail and intimidate buzzards like they will do with hawks the buzzards pay them no attention because they can shake them with just a flip of their wings. They are noiseless too and there is always one or several flying around above my place checking to see if I’m still alive. I guess.
Citizen_X
@greennotGreen:
Yes, but try telling that to the Transhumanist/science-should-make-us-immortal crowd.
Hillary Rettig
@maya: that was lovely and you should definitely be writing nature pieces if you’re not already doing so!
Hillary Rettig
@trollhattan: :-)
Miss Bianca
@maya: Same thing here at elevation in the Rockies. Saw a turkey buzzard the other day just sitting on a fence post stretching its wings out as if it were drying them in the sun. But usually I see them wheeling on the thermals high overhead. Alive with bird life over here – corvids who keep an eye on me and the dogs when we go walking, hummies who hover to make sure we don’t go too far away before filling up their feeders, wild turkeys all over, and shrikes who shriek on an endless loop when you get them started. To say nothing of chickadees and juncoes and little nuthatches, and hawks galore.
Gindy51
We have a breeding site for Turkey Vultures about a mile from my house. We walk by regularly to see what is going on during breeding season. They come to roost in our patch of forest, great thermals as we are in a valley and it makes it easy for the to take off.
They are very light birds compared to wild turkeys, little more than 5 or 6 pounds for all their size. We went to a bird how and I got to “hold” on on my arm. Very cool.
They also love to warm them selves with their wings outstretched on our fence posts or our neighbor’s roof. Drives her nuts, but I told her it makes her house look great for Halloween.
maya
@Hillary Rettig: @Hillary Rettig:
I wrote a turkey buzzard song when I first moved up here many moons back. Without the tune to go with it it loses something, but, here goes:
Turkey buzzard in the sky,
Tell me what attracts your eye.
Making lazy circles all day long in the sun.
Do you see a skunk, sir
Just layin’ on a stump, sir
Smellin’ kind of differently,
Than he’s use to normally?
Or do you spy a porcupine,
Who’s maybe running out of time,
Makin ‘out her will,
With the point of a quill?
Turkey buzzard in the sky,
Tell me what attracts your eye.
If I’m too close to your prey,
Well, I’ll gladly move away.
Is a chipmunk on this mountainside,
Undertaking suicide.
Is he almost comatose,
From an acorn overdose?
Or are you on the track,
Of a rodent heart attack,
A fibrillating mouse,
With no doctor in the house?
Turkey buzzard in the sky,
Tell me what attracts your eye,
What I’d really like to know,
Is why you’ve landed by my toe?
Are you waitin’ on a rabbit,
Who’s got a smoking habit,
Can you tell by his hack,
When he’s bought his last pack?
Or do you spy a rattlesnake,
Who’s got a fatal bellyache,
From one too many toad,
That she met along the road?
Turkey buzzard by my sleeve,
Don’t you think it’s time to leave?
But since you’re peckin’ on my head…..
(Oh, I was afraid of this!)
Then it’s me
That must be….
Dead!
maya
@Miss Bianca: Yeah.They dry themselves and their wings here too, but usually they do it on the branches of old dead trees. They look like something out of a Charles Adams cartoon.
pinacacci
They are also known to detect pipeline leaks. Useful fellows!
Amir Khalid
From the Western McKenna’s Gold — Old Turkey Buzzard, sung by Jose Feliciano.
laura
Off topic, but the Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass lineup has been announced and I am officially In Heaven!
What a joyful noise for free in Golden Gate Park over three days . . .
Bloix
The Parsis are an ancient religious group that originated in Persia and now live in Mumbai, India. They dispose of their dead by placing them on high platforms (called Towers of Silence) to be eaten by vultures. It used to be that the vultures would consume a body in half an hour – until the vulture population was wiped out by a drug given to livestock that had the unforeseen side effect of poisoning birds. Now the bodies pile up in the towers and rot.
http://www.independent.co.uk/node/6669506
ArchTeryx
Thing about vultures, too, is that unlike hawks and other birds of prey, they’re social birds, used to each other’s company. They also can bond with people.
I’ve had a Turkey Vulture on my arm before, preening my ear affectionately. So I gave the head some scratches of its own, and it’s the first time I heard a bird “purr”. Your average hawk, even raised around people, would sooner take your hand off as accept being touched!
They also have something unique in the animal kingdom: A gizzard (stomach) with acid so strong it registers as *negative* pH, the closest thing to “Hollywood acid” as we find in the living world. Acid that strong will react with and kill not just the bacteria, but most of the toxins they produce as well.
And yes, as has been said upthread, they can be and sometimes are predatory, particularly Black Vultures. They are birds of prey, just ones that primarily concentrate on carrion.
There’s a reason why a couple of my sentient-bird stories concentrated on vultures. We speak so ill of them, but they’re extremely useful, mostly harmless, fascinating members of the avisphere.
Shell
What a lovely word.
Elmo
@maya:
I love that SO MUCH.
Poopyman
Obligatory Far Side cartoon.
ArchTeryx
@Shell:
It sure beats saying “Class Aves”.
Poopyman
@maya: Can be sung to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
Feathers
My parents have a cabin in rural VA. Vultures are now nesting in one of the fallen down outbuildings. We just give it a fairly wide berth, no an issue. My dad is something of a birder, has feeders up, loves to watch them. Many of his friends are somewhat amazed that this extends to vultures. It probably helps that the grandkids are old enough to actually stay away from the vultures.
maya
@Poopyman: Come to think of it, that’s pretty close to what I did. Didn’t realize that till you pointed it out. Duh, me.
Miss Bianca
@laura: Jealous! I’ve only been to Hardly Strictly once, and it was an amazing experience. Stand-outs that I remember were Richard Thompson and Odetta (I think it may have been her last public performance).
redshirt
@greennotGreen: Heh. I just had a similar experience. I always have vultures gliding in the valley below, but usually never close. But one day I’m working outside and about 20 of them start circling overhead, getting closer and closer. When they were about 200 feet above me I shouted out “I’m alive! I’m alive!”
I assume there was something dead nearby, and I looked for it, but didn’t find it.
Feathers
Just remembered this and it seems appropriate for the faunasphere thread:
The Miniature Donkey Therapy Meet-Up Warning: NYTimes link. Includes a very cute and heartwarming video.
Mobile
Many years ago, I lived in southern-most Maryland. There was a wonderful 18th century home near my place. It had been built in England, transported to America, and then reassembled. Although the house was in perfect condition and beautiful, it had been rendered uninhabitable by an owner who doused the place in Spectracide to combat termites. For some unfathomable reason, the vultures used the structure as a roost. Often, when I passed the place on my way home from work, the roof would be crowded with birds, wings outstretched. Very spooky. On one occasion, on my way to work, I passed under a tree limb occupied by a lone vulture. At the precise moment I passed under the critter, he let loose with the contents of his breakfast, the entrails of a dead opossum. I believe I emptied my windshield fluid reservoir before I got to work and still had goop sticking to the glass. I am not normally squeamish, but I’ve got to admit, this had me gagging.
Frankensteinbeck
@evodevo:
That is because ‘buzzard’ does not mean ‘vulture.’ Some buzzards are vultures. Others are hawks.
MomSense
@Feathers:
There is a donkey rescue in NH called Save Your Ass. They have the best motto. “The ass you save could be your own.”
jon
I’ve long been a fan of this bird, which my very young son called the “Marabou Dork!”
ArchTeryx
@redshirt: It also might have just been a “kettle” of vultures in a declining thermal; eventually, when they get close enough to the ground, they’ll wing off to the next bubble of rising air, or find a spot to land and rest a bit. Not ALL circling vultures are over prey. :-)
cleek
the main road near my house cuts across a lake, on an earthen bridge (?) about 15 feet above the water. vultures hang out there, basically at eye level, hovering in the breeze that it gets pushed up over the road. they’re pretty awesome to watch.
ospreys will sometimes do the same thing, but they’re a bit more shy around traffic. vultures dont’ give a shit.
ArchTeryx
@Frankensteinbeck: More specifically, we refer to vultures as “buzzards” in the U.S., but in Europe and Africa, “buzzard” is a specific kind of hawk – a buteo. A Red Tailed Hawk, the most common bird of prey here, would be called a Red-Tailed Buzzard on the other side of the pond.
D58826
Was on the road leading to my house and there were 3-4 vultures in the middle of the road. They didn’t move an inch. Looked me over like maybe I was on the menu for later in the day.
As nasty as Canadian geese.
germy
@D58826: They get pissed if you call them Canadian geese. They prefer “Canada Geese”.
Don’t know why.
D58826
@germy: Ah that explains why they keep hissing at me.
Of course my hunter FIL just called them dinner
germy
In the end, the vultures will be just fine.
bago
@greennotGreen: C:\WINDOWS\system32> iwr -Method Head -Uri https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/turkey-vulture-768×51
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StatusCode : 200
StatusDescription : OK
Content : {}
RawContent : HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 64936
Cache-Control: max-age=31536000
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2016 18:05:56 GMT
Expires: Mon, 04 Sep 20…
Headers : {[Connection, close], [Accept-Ranges, bytes], [Content-Length, 64936], [Cache-Control,
max-age=31536000]…}
RawContentLength : 0
Shell
This was over at Daily Kos: “Donald Trump and I are both going to release our tax returns. I’ll release mine in the next week. Donald Trump will be releasing his tax returns at the completion of an audit,” Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said…’
The comment was “Whose bright idea was this?” The medias’ pretty much given him a pass on this; just assumed that he does pay low taxes and gives little to charity. Time to move on. So why bring the subject up again. And again with the phony excuse of the audit. The IRS has already debunked that one. And seriously, who gives a damn about Pences returns? Its Trumps who people want to see.
Frankensteinbeck
@ArchTeryx:
This is a common problem, because scientists only get to make scientific names, which are rarely used by anybody. for example, while entomologists might wish that only Vespa hornets were ‘hornets’, the name in actual practice means ‘scary wasp.’
@germy:
Good gravy, that is stupid. The flaws in its reasoning are so blatant, I can only assume that they’re being wildly misleading about the actual report’s meaning. Since that’s pretty much SOP in science reporting, I’m going to go with that. Extreme differences between elite and the common masses in resource use are so much the historical norm, either other factors must be the important issue, or ‘resource use’ is not defined the way we would normally interpret. The article does not explain the term, and does not provide comparisons in historical data. It just lets the reader conflate ‘resource use’ with the current cultural concern with income inequality, and shows one way increased efficiency did not result in lower resource use so that we would assume we are in a resource scarce situation.
Oh, and the Romans did see it coming. They were obsessed with it. Revelations is nothing but ‘the fall of Rome is coming!’ porn. That may not be significant, since ‘the end is near’ has been a constant refrain throughout Western civilization’s history.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: Touché, Baud. Dropping out of the election hasn’t dampened your humor, I see.
Brachiator
@germy:
This is beyond stupid. And easily debunked by even a basic knowledge of history. Even the reductive, phony distinction between elite and commoner should set off alarms in a discerning reader.
A quick example. Etruscan society did not collapse, it was conquered by Rome. And the Etruscan elite were allowed to blend into Roman society. The rest of the Etruscan people were not so lucky if they could not buy or bribe their way out of slavery or subjugation.
germy
@Brachiator: Don’t tell the vultures. Let the fuckers think they’ll have plenty to pick at when we collapse.
Cleos
Don’t have many vultures in our area but a lot of buzzards. After watching them soar around on air currents, I’ve concluded that being reincarnated as a buzzard wouldn’t be a bad deal. And they probably don’t go hungry very often.
TriassicSands
Thanks for the video of the shoebill. What a great head!
The Wikipedia entry has a short video with a wonderful close up shot of the head and bill.