bald is beautiful
Turkey Vultures are AMAZING to watch. Their flight seems effortless; they hardly every flap their wings and use updrafts from cliff areas and sun-heated ground to patrol the skies. They’re on the lookout for dead animals, so they are a valuable part of nature’s cleanup crew. If you see what looks like a black hawk soaring it’s probably a turkey vulture. To stabilize themselves, they fly with their wings angled up just a bit in a shallow V (jet aircraft also have this). Feathers splay out at wingtips to reduce drag during flight. And they rock back and forth as they fly, reacting to air turbulence. With their fairly light bodies and large wings, they have the lightest wing-loading (ratio of body weight to wing surface) of all of our raptors (birds of prey), which helps them stay in the air without using much energy.
So why are they bald? Well, with just a beak to gorge on dead and often rotten flesh, it would be a tough job to keep head feathers clean. When seen from a distance, they almost seem “headless” when compared to hawks and eagles whose feathers make their heads seem quite large. Unlike many birds, they have an excellent sense of smell – quite an advantage when searching out tasty (and smelly) rotting dead animals!
Over the past decades, Turkey Vulture numbers have increased greatly in our area. Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area (run by Conservation Halton) is a great place to see them, and you can often look down on Turkey Vultures as they soar along the cliff. They are especially numerous all along the Niagara Escarpment, but they are seen everywhere in southern Ontario from early spring to late fall.
Watch for: their rocking flight, splayed-out feathers at the tips of their wings, dihedral wing position (shallow V), small-looking head (no feathers!)
Dan the Nature Man 