Red head? Turkey vulture

Q. I saw your wildlife articles and I was wondering if you can tell me what the large bird with the red head is that circles above my house?

Jill from Greenford

A. This is the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura). It is the most abundant and most widely distributed avian scavenger in the New World. You are right – it is quite large – up to 28 inches long, weighing four pounds, with a wing span up to 6 feet! The dark color of this bird is easily recognized on the ground by its featherless, red head and also in the air, due to its broad, “eagle-sized” wings that characteristically wobble just a bit as it soars in great circles in the updrafts.

Every spring, turkey vultures migrate from their winter ranges in Florida or Texas to their summer breeding grounds in the Northeast. Migrating turkey vultures cannot fly at night, as they require the heat of the day to produce the thermal up drafts they need to soar and must seek out roosts as evening approaches.

Vultures don’t build “nests” as such. They lay one to three eggs on the ground where soil, leaf litter, and pieces of rotting wood have been pushed aside to make a spot for the eggs. There are relatively few locations that will be suitable for a turkey vulture to build its nest. But once chosen, it may be used for a decade or more. Both parents incubate the eggs and feed the young. A pair of turkey vultures may spend over four months rearing their young. Turkey vultures are very long-lived birds. Life spans up to 25 years have been recorded.

If you ever go looking for raptors on a clear day, your heart has probably leaped at the sight of a large, soaring bird in the distance– perhaps an eagle or osprey. But if it’s soaring with its wings raised in a V and making wobbly circles, it’s likely a turkey vulture. They are not beautiful to look at up close, they make no beautiful songs (in fact they lack the organ of song generation), and they eat dead animals.

Turkey vultures use their extremely well developed sense of smell to locate a carcass, which is unusual since most avian scavengers and birds of prey utilize vision to find their food. This reliance on scent detection may explain their “wobbling” behaviors in flight as this motion may increase their ability to detect and precisely locate a scent source. Use of scent also enables them to find buried or cached carcasses hidden by other animals. Their role in clearing and cleaning up our ecosystems is vital to the health of all. The turkey vulture’s efficient digestive system destroys ingested pathogens and their fecal materials are free of any pathogenic organisms.

In parts of North America, turkey vultures are referred to as “buzzards,” which are a specific group of European and African hawks. How that name became attached to the turkey vulture remains a mystery.

For more information, visit go.osu.edu/turkeyvulture.

Today’s answer provided by Sara Scudier, Ohio certified volunteer naturalist. Call the office hotline at 330-533-5538 to submit your questions. Regular clinic hours are 9 a.m. noon Mondays and Thursdays.