17 September 07
Turkey Vulture
A juvenile red-tailed hawk, the same one, I think, that caught the ground-squirrel last week, this morning got one of the cottontail young that have been hanging around outside my window at work. It fed for about half an hour and then took off, leaving the hapless bunny behind. We looked at the carcass; mostly the liver had gone and part of the gut.
The turkey vulture arrived within the hour. It was very wary and after a few bites it took off too, but returned a little later to resume eating. A second joined it and was chased off. More vultures circled overhead and one actually landed on the back of the other, presumably to shake it off its meal. Between the four or five of them, not much was left of the rabbit.
Do fresh carcasses smell so quickly? They must. There were no other birds around this one to alert the vultures to its presence…
( I’m off to back from the Raptor Center for lunch to draw one of these birds up close. I’m interested that the feather sheen on the neck is bluish-green while the wing feathers have a definite brown cast…)
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I well remember David Attenborough on The Life of Birds demonstrating the phenomenal sense of smell possessed by the turkey vulture.
That is a great picture – I love the choice of background colour!