Mrs Blacktailer and I were wondering why we don't see any buzzards near our home. When we lived in a rural area of the California Central Coast it was common to see 5 or so buzzards at a time and not unusual to see 10-20 or more circling in the updrafts near our home. Here in the desert we have pretty much the same predator and prey species as before with the exception of javelina but never see any buzzards and don't find carrion when out in the desert. Of course anyone who has hunted in Africa knows that by the time you load game in the bakke there will be 200 vultures watching the proceedings. Do javelina clean up the carrion so there is nothing left for buzzards to eat?

Buzzards are seasonally common in my part of AZ....

Coyotes and birds of prey clean up all carrion....

Tons of them in Texas, black buzzards seem to be running the turkey buzzards out!

Lead bullets....

Both Black and Turkey Vultures are migratory throughout most of their range. They are primarily scavengers, although they can (and ocasionally do) capture and kill live prey where the prey species is/are abundant.

I live about 15 or so miles east of the Arizona line, at 4,400 ft elevation in the Animas Valley of southwestern New Mexico. Here, in the overlap of the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts, we see lots of Turkey Vultures passing through, both spring and fall. However, both Bald and Golden Eagles winter here, too--and they subsist primarily on road kill and other carrion. They are much more aggressive than the Turkey Vultures which seem to just move on south once the eagles arrive. The Black Vultures are strictly occasional summertime visitors. Additionally, both vultures have circulatory systems that are not especially efficient at regulating body temperatures. They don't do well around here where winter nights are often close to (or below) freezing. It takes them a while to warm up in on sunny mornings after a cold night. Periods of frequent cloud cover during cold days seems to spur them to move on south.

I suspect that you are just not in a major migration corridor, but local availability of prey and carrion probably also play a part.

This might explain it. Or not.

Nothing but a buzzard with a feathered head.

Killed a coyote right at daylight one morning 4 or 5 years ago. By noon a pair bald eagles were picking at him. Stinkin bastards.

Buzzards are not commonly seen in Arizona...turkey vultures...we see all the time.

Saw a black vulture, once.

I have lived in Arizona a long time and see them often. drive the road east of Bagdad. but they are every where.

It is probably the cold that drives them away. Hadn't thought about it before but it is quite a bit colder here in the winter than it was in Ca and I remember the buzzards sitting on power poles and fence posts with their wings outstretched in the mornings warming up.

we have 'em here........

should be back real soon........summer birds

Lots of them in western OK; they are in the east too, but all those trees make it harder to see them.

This is one of the best bird resources. It supports what others have posted. Click on the Black Vulture lnk to see it's range map. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Turkey_Vulture/overview

Nice link Telano. We have hundreds of those black ones here in FL., but I see by your link that they don't get much farther north than the center of the country. We have a few turkey vultures in WI., but there is no way that they are keeping up with the road kill up there. WI. kills 20,000 deer a year with vehicle crashes and there is near nothing up there to eat them all. If these blacks buzzards would spend half the energy migrating instead of just flying in circles around here, there would be a feast for them up north. It's not unusual to see a dozen of these black ones all over a road killed raccoon and a pig was gone down to the skin and bones in a week.

That explains it. On the Ca coast they were there year round but only part time in AZ. Thanks!

I agree with you on bald eagles, but golden are a whole 'nother thing. Studies have shown goldens are the number one predator on Dall's sheep lambs.

Better add... in slightly more interior Alaska. We do not have them here on the coast except when migrating. Coyote are number one in the Chugach Range.

I am wondering how many whitetail fawns and full grown turkey hens these Bald Eagles are killing.

Personally not a fan of birds of prey.

Not sure why we control four legged predators but we just let the predators in the sky have a free pass.

Here in Tx. the fire ants take more turkey polts and fawns than birds of prey, plus the hog kill is really high in some areas. The hogs are especially hard on the nesting hens eating the eggs and the hens too.

The scavengers do a great job as garbage collectors and limiting the possible spread of diseases.

Rotten basta
Rotten bastards. Glad we don't have very many of em in our neck of the woods.

Dad did get one on trail cam last fall.

Could be. We have lots of them in Idaho in warm weather but they all migrate out for the winter.

Four legs regulated by the states, birds of prey are protected under the fed’s “migratory bird treaty act”

I'll sometimes sit still after shooting a coyote and see what happens, at about 20 minutes the Ravens are near and at 30 minutes they are on the carcass. Road kill isn't visible for long, ravens, followed by buzzards/vultures and all get chased off by the Golden Eagles. We enjoy looking for Desert Sheep and spotting Golden Eagles is a giveaway for good areas to start glassing during lambing. Scavengers and Raptors are not as threatened as are their food sources. When I was a kid any large bird sitting on a phone pole was considered as needing killing.


mike r

A few years ago I was kicking around the desert looking for a rabbit when I happened upon a dead sheep. I kicked 4 goldens off of it. Dang they're big close up! I half expected to see Gandalf on one of them.

They are all in Washington DC

Turkey buzzards are around my house all year. The blacks show up when it gets hot.

43.5 Lat 119 Long: Saw our first one this AM working a 24 mph cottontail that attempted a crossing in a 25 mph zone. Think it might have been a bit hungry, as it tolerated a very close approach before taking flight. If they will leave town and get out to the nearby ground squirrel fields, they should be able to chub up big time.

On other spring arrivals, we had a pair of Western Bluebirds giving our front driveway box a thorough look this morning.

There are PLENTY here in the Desert. For about a month straight there were a few dozen hanging out at Superstition Springs Mall in southeast Mesa. They were roosting all up and down the center median and on the roofs of businesses along Southern Avenue. I haven't been past there recently so I don't know if they are still there. I see them frequently while hunting in the desert areas.

We have both here in Southern Indiana however the black vultures are hated by the farmers/ranchers. They have become a quite a nuisance during cattle calving season, if they can they will pick at a calf's eyes, eventually killing them.

Have you noticed, nothing will touch one of their carcasses, not even other vultures/buzzards!

Is a "buzzard" a black vulture?


We had turkey vultures here on the highways even back as a little kid. However balck vultures ere rare/absent. They've made big inroads (pun) the passed 20 years though, to the point that they may be as common as the TV's.

Our osprey and bald eagle pops are WAY up too, doing better than anyone expected. Never see bald eagle on carrion.

Do Osprey eat carrion? They always seem to have a fish in talons when I see them.


wish they all ate the effin cormorants. A plague on my local ponds.

Here is the ones around Paso Robles. We always just called them buzzards.

When I'm down in the low desert here in Kalifornia, I can't remember seeing any during the fall hunting season. I do see a few hawks and surprising number of owls. At the north end of Death Valley NP, I would regularly see a few along with some Golden Eagles. That's a "mid level" desert between the high sagebrush desert and the low Ironwood Desert. Why that is, I don't know. The big difference I suspect is in the Ironwood, low desert, it's pretty tough for them to see much from the air. Most of the wildlife is found in and around the clusters of low trees in the washes. The Mojave Desert, north of DVNP, the it's a lot more open. E

[quote=Crockettnj

Our osprey and bald eagle pops are WAY up too, doing better than anyone expected. Never see bald eagle on carrion.

Do Osprey eat carrion? They always seem to have a fish in talons when I see them.


.[/quote]
During the annual raptor migrations, I routinely flush both bald and golden eagles off of road kill, and both readily eat the gut piles from feral hogs that people shoot this time of the year.

While I have never seen an osprey eat carrion, they do migrate through here. I have a photo of one perched on a power pole just west of our house, taken on the 6th of April, in 2018. There is no open water with significant populations of fish anywhere around here.

I presume that they opportunistically eat small mammals, and perhaps road kill--certainly all of the other raptors that pass through here on their annual migrations do.

Same around here. Coyotes and ravens are the "cleaners", along with some magpies. We do have buzzards in the fall.

Same problem over here.

There is plenty in Burnet county now. They were on pigs as soon as we killed them. Turkey and blacks!

They are big! Have a meeting pair of golden here. Bald Eagles are mostly to darn lazy to kill something other than the odd duck.
Have had them gather and eat the after birth during calving . Lost one calf to a eagle getting aggressive with an umbilical on a new born.
Not fond of bald eagles.
As far as buzzards/vultures in AZ we see them all the time at the house in Scottsdale and the house East of Payson.
In Scottsdale the house in on a creek with cotton woods and willow. The Buzzards sit in the trees in the morning sun to heat their wing bones then go hunting.
Come back about dark.
Here in Idaho they came early this year. Think they regret it! Snowed today!😡

In response to Blacktailer's nice shot.

If no pics, then it didn't happen. Cookie bumped into an early morning pair yesterday sort of waiting for the humidity to cook off. They were certainly not in line when looks were passed out. Only Turkey Vultures in this part of the country.