Vultures

 

 

Vultures are built for efficient soaring, so they don’t have enough muscle power to fly very far by flapping.  They get exhausted quickly.  They’re migratory birds so they have to circle up on wind currents or thermals to get the altitude they need to migrate long distances.  When they have to cross a body of water, it’s touchy.  There are no thermals over large bodies of water, so no lift.  They had better be high enough to make it all the way across before they start.  That’s not a problem for vultures here in the Americas because they can just stay over land.  It is a problem for the vultures migrating between Southern Europe and Africa though.  If they try to cross directly over the Mediterranean, drowning is the most likely result.  A safer route is an extra thousand miles to go around to the east, or go west to the narrowest point, the Strait of Gibraltar, for about an eight-mile crossing.  But I digress…

 

We have two species of vultures that we see here, the black vulture and the turkey vulture.  They look different.  Here is a comparison of their silhouettes from below.

 

Turkey Vulture.

 

Black Vulture.

 

Different wing shape.  Different coloring.  Different tail shape.  The turkey vulture has that red face, but you can’t always see that.  The black vulture isn’t really that much smaller, the bird was higher.