![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
MOAR Birds at the Carolina Raptor Center
Oct. 22nd, 2023 09:45 amAfter sharing a few nice hawk pics from the Carolina Raptor Center yesterday I've got a few more to share today. These two aren't hawks; they're vultures. Carrion eaters. Technically they're raptors, a somewhat loosely defined category of carnivorous birds that seize prey. (The word raptor comes from a Latin verb that means to seize and carry off.)
First up today is a turkey vulture.
The species is found across much of North and South America. In the US it's especially common in the southwest. Out in California, for example, I see turkey vultures constantly.
Vultures occupy a macabre but important part in they cycle of life. They are nature's gravediggers. Though instead of digging graves for dead bodies they eat them.
Turkey vultures have a number of interesting biological adaptations to fit their role in the ecosystem. A key one I chose the picture above to highlight is their bald heads. The red skin on their scalp is how they got the name turkey vulture. From a distance their head resembles a turkey's. Up close, though, they look ghoulish. (BTW, if this bird were to turn slightly sideways you'd see straight through its nostrils.) The featherless head allows it to plunge not just its beak into a carcass but to stick its head in all the way up to the neck, without splatting soaking its feathers in blood and guts that become a hygiene problem.
As far as eating blood and guts— but mostly dead, rotting meat? Turkey vultures have incredibly acidic stomachs. They're, like, a 1 on the pH scale. Their stomach acid breaks down meat so they can digest the proteins faster than bacteria in the flesh (like the ones that cause botulism in humans) can make them sick. And parasites? Ha, ha, stomach acid.
There are a lot of other facts I could share about vultures (and when we were visiting these birds at the Carolina Raptor Center a an enthusiastic staffer nearby told us she could talk for hours about vultures) but instead of that I'll share another bird pic first.
This next bird is an Andean condor.
The Andean condor ranges along the west coast of South America— in, well, the Andes. Like the turkey vulture it's a carrion eater. You can see it has the same adaptation of a featherless head.
Andean condors are huge birds, with adult wingspans of 10 - 10.5 feet (up to 3.2 meters). This is much larger than the turkey vulture— which is not exactly a small bird, having adult wingspans of about 6 feet (2.9 m). It's even larger than the California condor, which I thought was the largest raptor species in the world until I saw this bird's display.
The white ruff on this bird's neck is interesting. It reminds me of how vultures were always depicted in the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons years ago. That's a geographical misplacement, as the cartoons were set in the colorful red rock country of the US Southwest, particularly the kind of landscapes with narrow rock towers and arches found in southern Utah, while this species is only found 5,000 miles away. All I can figure is that some of the Looney Tunes artists saw an Andean condor on a visit to South America, or perhaps in a zoo or even a picture book back home, and were impressed by the fur-like collar as an evocative characteristic to use in their art.
First up today is a turkey vulture.
The species is found across much of North and South America. In the US it's especially common in the southwest. Out in California, for example, I see turkey vultures constantly.
Vultures occupy a macabre but important part in they cycle of life. They are nature's gravediggers. Though instead of digging graves for dead bodies they eat them.
Turkey vultures have a number of interesting biological adaptations to fit their role in the ecosystem. A key one I chose the picture above to highlight is their bald heads. The red skin on their scalp is how they got the name turkey vulture. From a distance their head resembles a turkey's. Up close, though, they look ghoulish. (BTW, if this bird were to turn slightly sideways you'd see straight through its nostrils.) The featherless head allows it to plunge not just its beak into a carcass but to stick its head in all the way up to the neck, without splatting soaking its feathers in blood and guts that become a hygiene problem.
As far as eating blood and guts— but mostly dead, rotting meat? Turkey vultures have incredibly acidic stomachs. They're, like, a 1 on the pH scale. Their stomach acid breaks down meat so they can digest the proteins faster than bacteria in the flesh (like the ones that cause botulism in humans) can make them sick. And parasites? Ha, ha, stomach acid.
There are a lot of other facts I could share about vultures (and when we were visiting these birds at the Carolina Raptor Center a an enthusiastic staffer nearby told us she could talk for hours about vultures) but instead of that I'll share another bird pic first.
This next bird is an Andean condor.
The Andean condor ranges along the west coast of South America— in, well, the Andes. Like the turkey vulture it's a carrion eater. You can see it has the same adaptation of a featherless head.
Andean condors are huge birds, with adult wingspans of 10 - 10.5 feet (up to 3.2 meters). This is much larger than the turkey vulture— which is not exactly a small bird, having adult wingspans of about 6 feet (2.9 m). It's even larger than the California condor, which I thought was the largest raptor species in the world until I saw this bird's display.
The white ruff on this bird's neck is interesting. It reminds me of how vultures were always depicted in the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons years ago. That's a geographical misplacement, as the cartoons were set in the colorful red rock country of the US Southwest, particularly the kind of landscapes with narrow rock towers and arches found in southern Utah, while this species is only found 5,000 miles away. All I can figure is that some of the Looney Tunes artists saw an Andean condor on a visit to South America, or perhaps in a zoo or even a picture book back home, and were impressed by the fur-like collar as an evocative characteristic to use in their art.
