turkey vulture
- Also called:
- turkey buzzard
turkey vulture, (Cathartes aura), long-winged long-tailed vulture (family Cathartidae) that has dark plumage, a whitish beak, white legs, and a bare red head (black in immature birds) that is covered with whitish bumps. The species subsists predominantly on carrion (dead and putrefying flesh), and it occurs throughout the Americas except northern Canada; northerly and southernmost populations are migratory.
The turkey vulture’s wings extend about 1.8 metres (6 feet) across, from wing tip to wing tip, and its body length is about 75 cm (30 inches). It has an elaborate olfactory canal and uses its keen sense of smell in finding food. Breeding females may produce one to three eggs, which are white with brown spots and are laid in areas of thick ground cover, on cave floors, in gaps between rocks, in hollow tree stumps, and in abandoned hawk nests. Males and females share incubation, and young hatch within five or six weeks, before learning to fly some nine or 10 weeks later. Most turkey vultures live for 10–16 years in the wild; some can live as long as 30 years in captivity.
Turkey vulture eggs may be taken by mammalian predators, including raccoons and foxes, but adult birds have few predators. Some, however, fall victim to eagles, hawks, and owls. Turkey vultures are common throughout their range. Globally, the species is made up of several million birds, and thus it is listed as a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
