Animal Fact Sheets

Diet
In the wild: Unlike true birds of prey, vultures rarely catch live prey. Vultures seek out carrion (dead animals) and will eat most anything they come upon. Soaring high above ground, they use their acute vision to locate food. The turkey vulture has a more developed sense of smell than most birds, and can easily locate covered carcasses not visible from the air.

At the zoo: Mice, rats, quail, trout and stockbones.

Reproduction
Prior to pairing up, turkey vultures often take part in a group “dance.” Gathering in large numbers on open ground, they hop, with wings trailing, toward one another. Turkey vultures do not make nests. Instead, clutches of about two eggs are laid in a variety of locations, including bare ground in the brush, the floor of caves, on rock shelves, or in rotted-out logs. Both parents incubate the eggs, which takes 38-41 days. Both parents feed the hungry chicks with regurgitated food. Young stay in the nest for about six weeks.

Life Cycle
Turkey vultures spend much of the day soaring in the sky in search of carrion. Although primarily scavengers, turkey vultures may rarely attack insects or small, sick animals. At night they often gather in large roosts. Turkey vultures living in the northern reaches of their range tend to be migratory, and usually assemble in flocks of up to several hundred individuals for the fall and spring migration to and from wintering grounds in the southern states, Mexico, south to South America.

Clumsy on the Ground - Agile in the Air
These large birds move awkwardly on the ground, walking or hopping clumsily with a sideways hitch. When preparing to take flight, a turkey vulture leans forward, takes a few steps, hops and then pushes off with its legs while flapping its wings.

Once airborne, turkey vultures become birds of grace and agility. Using their large, broad wings to ride warm air thermals, they soar upward and rarely have to flap their wings.

Turkey vultures are easy to identify in flight. Their wings are held in a V-shape, or dihedral, over their back. Because they are very light for their size, they tend to teeter back and forth in the wind.

Table Manners?
Vultures are social animals. Several dozen turkey vultures may flock to a large carcass within minutes after its death. Although turkey vultures are usually silent, this all changes when they gather to eat. Silence is replaced with shoving, hissing, grunting, growling and squabbling, and fighting between vultures breaks out at times. Injury, however, rarely occurs during the upheaval of the feeding frenzy.

The bare head of a turkey vulture is an adaptation for its scavenging life style, and helps keep the head clean when the vulture sticks its head inside the carcass of a large animal.