"The vultures are very interesting birds. They are, of course, the scavengers. One can look in all directions and not see a vulture in sight, but within seconds after shooting an animal, one could look up in the sky and just barely see them start to come down, and within minutes there would be hundreds of them, ready to feed on the animal carcass! We learned that they normally fly so high in the sky that they are out of sight from the ground, but inasmuch as their eyesight is very keen, they can spot the smallest animal on the ground.
One afternoon, when we had shot a zebra, we immediately noticed hundreds of vultures high in the sky above us. Within a few minutes they were almost thick as a cloud above us. After we had skinned the zebra, we drove our hunting car away about 150 yards, where we sat and watched the vultures come in and fee on the zebra carcass. As we watched them, we counted them, and also timed them! There were over 250 vultures that came in to feed. They swarmed over the carcass three or four layers thick - like bees. In fact, they pushed each other out of the way in order to get a bite of the meat! In seventeen minutes by watch, they had completely devoured the entire zebra carcass, which we estimated weighed about 800 pounds."
You don’t want to be taking a nap around there 😮
That scares me being old at the lease if by myself. You fall, get knocked out, you are in trouble.
If you think that's impressive, drop a $20.00 bill on the sidewalk in any dummycrap city, and watch the urban buzzards pounce on it and fight each other over who pockets it! They make the scavengers on the savannah look positively genteel by comparison!
No Marabou Storks in the mix?
We have three native vultures in North America, tho the Condor is on its last legs.
The turkey vultures (several related species in the tropics) are an anomaly, they can find carrion by scent. Compared to other vultures they can efficiently forage low enough to locate food by odor, a trait especially useful in forested areas. To aid this low altitude foraging technique they have an extremely low wing-loading, allowing then to soar at lower altitudes and in cooler weather.
Black vultures are heavier and aerodynamically speaking, more resemble Old World vultures in flight profile. Like them, black vultures are designed to cruise efficiently (about 45 mph) all day long on high altitude thermals.
Black vultures live in permanent clans where the members are related
From their high vantage point, black vultures observe each other across the sky and also observe turkey vultures. When a turkey vulture finds a hidden carcass, black vultures will follow it down. Surrounding vultures see another black vulture descending and converge on that spot. This is why you might see 10 black vultures and just 2 turkey vultures on a carcass. Black vultures, being heavier, can also displace turkey vultures from a carcass.
The really interesting thing is that at the communal roost site, a black vulture that has found carrion can communicate that knowledge to their clan members, the whole clan following that one bird in the morning.
The edge turkey vultures have is that they can get up in the air earlier in the morning and in less-clement weather, and are also found further north than black vultures.
Old World vultures are close kin to hawks and eagles and it shows.
IIRC New World vultures are actually related to storks.
We have a gut pit where we throw all the guts from hunting kills, every morning the Turkey vultures are lined up on the fence waiting for the gut wagon, we call the gut wagon meals on wheels, and the vultures O' Bummer, voters their Black sitting on their ass waiting for a free hand out then fighting over it. Rio7