If students at Potomac Elementary School ever need a definition of “creepy,” they can just look out the window. Turkey vultures have been a regular presence in the fields around their rural campus this summer. As the weather cools, they’ll probably continue migrating south, missing a great Halloween opportunity.
Bigger than ravens but smaller than eagles, turkey vultures take a careful eye to distinguish in the Montana sky. If you’re close enough to a perched one, you may spot its scrawny, bald, red head. Turkey vultures make do with a thin fuzz of down from the neck up, so they don’t get their feathers gunked up while pulling a meal out of some road-killed deer’s chest cavity.
“That’s the thing that kids really like about them,” Oberbillig said of the bird’s specialized behaviors. “They urinate on their legs to cool down, and the acidic urine acts as antibacterial soap because they’re stepping into carrion. If a turkey vulture is challenged by a coyote, it will vomit foul-smelling meat at the predator. They will also do it to fly if they’ve gorged too much. The kids love it.”
It seems everything about turkey vultures has been designed with blatant purpose. While they may look like crows or hawks in flight, better birdwatchers notice the distinctive “V” angle of their wings. Turkey vultures hold the avian record for most efficient flight, typically flapping no more than once a minute. In fact, that morning wing-spreading routine is literally a pre-flight warmup for a day of soaring.
“They’re just waiting for the ground to warm up and catch a thermal to ride on,” said Megan Fylling, a research specialist at the University of Montana’s avian science center. “They expend less energy when they’re on those thermals, flying around looking for something to eat. If they don’t have to expend any energy to get up in the air, they’ll stay there all day.”
Wing-spreading also helps bake off any flecks of meat that may be stuck to their feathers, according to the FAQ page on the Turkey Vulture Society’s Web site (yes, the bird has its own international fan club).
Unlike most birds, turkey vultures have a highly acute sense of smell. They combine that with excellent eyesight to target dead animals they can eat. They’re timid, and don’t really like to approach still-living victims. But they do watch one another and other birds, moving quickly to investigate potential finds.
That sense of smell has produced another unexpected human benefit. Turkey vultures usually key into the odor of rotting meat. It’s very similar to mercaptan, the stuff energy companies put in odorless natural gas so humans can smell it. Utility repair crews often watch for vultures circling along their route to locate leaking gas pipelines.
The Turkey Vulture Society devotes another lengthy page to the matter of unwanted vultures roosting in your neighborhood. Like any good advocacy group, it recommends getting along with the birds rather than chasing them away. They’re federally protected migratory birds, so shouldn’t be killed unless they are causing property damage or other health risks.
But should living next to an avian Addams Family grow too oppressive, the society has several options. Shaking their tree just as they’re settling in for the evening is plan A. Harassing them with a sprinkler is plan B.
But the most intriguing (although defective) method involves tying unwanted CDs to helium balloons and floating them into the perch.
“This can backfire if your vultures are too curious and playful, as they have been known to be,” the Web site notes. “After a while, the vultures may discover that the objects pose them no risk, at which point they will instead become fun toys. So it is best to initially accompany this tactic with noise or blasts from a garden hose, and to be careful not to hang these items somewhere that you would find to be a particularly undesirable secondary vulture roost.”
The situation might become more common around western Montana. Fylling said recent research on bird habitat shows many weather-sensitive species are taking advantage of global temperature changes to expand their range. In the case of turkey vultures, that means they’re traveling farther north and shortening their southern migrations.
“With the rising temperatures, there may be more of them around here than there was 30 or 40 years ago,” Fylling said. “With all the restoration around Milltown Dam, with willows growing in and the grass coming back, that will be really good breeding territory.”
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.
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