Day 54: Turkey Vulture

The Turkey Vulture is one of the animal kingdom's more unpleasant-looking birds, though they do perform the important function of eating carrion. Turkey Vultures can be found throughout most of North and South America.

The Turkey Vulture is almost exclusively a scavenger of carrion, unlike the related Black Vulture which has been known to kill livestock (I'll post about Black Vultures another time). It has a sharp sense of smell and finds food by flying low enough to detect the gasses produced by the beginnings of the process of decay in dead animals (yum). The Turkey Vulture is one of the only bird species that can smell.

Turkey Vultures are  brownish-black in color, and adults have small red heads with few to no feathers. They also have a short hooked beak. Turkey Vultures lack a syrinx, the vocal organ of birds, so the only vocalizations they can make are grunts and hisses. When flying, Turkey Vultures holds its wings in a shallow V-shape, which is one way to distinguish them from Black Vultures, which hold their wings level.

Fun fact: Evidently, the Turkey Vulture is the main avian species causing damage and fatalities in military aircraft collisions in the United States.