Author Topic: Turkey vultures over Hackensack  (Read 4117 times)

Offline BLeafe

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Turkey vultures over Hackensack
« on: November 02, 2011, 05:07:07 PM »
I saw these two birds from my living room on Sunday. They were just gliding in sort of a circular fashion and slowly moving east to west right over my building. I managed to zoom in on one of them.

At first I thought they were hawks, but when I downloaded the images and saw those feathers, I hit the Internet and guessed correctly  - turkey vultures.

As majestic-looking as they are in flight, they are the exact opposite on the ground. This has to be one of the ugliest birds in existence, as you can see in the last image.

According to Wikipedia, "It finds its meals using its keen vision and sense of smell, flying low enough to detect the gasses produced by the beginnings of the process of decay in dead animals."

I read elsewhere that the reason its head and neck are bald is so they can be inserted deeper into a carcass.

Charming.




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