Turkey Vulture_IMG_0848_edited-1 by Carla Kishinami Via Flickr: Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura : Cathartidae) Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Brigham City, Utah. With raccoon roadkill.
This nice leucistic turkey vulture lady is doing some arts and crafts! Her name is Ms. Grain-Entrapment Irony, according to traditional vulture naming conventions.
She’s my half of an art trade with @theveryworstthing! Her vultures (and other Rabbits of Downtrodden drawings) were my very first introduction to her art, and it was love at first sight. Please follow her for some peerless creature/character design, if you aren’t already!
excellent vulture 10/10!!!! vultures and rabbits alike love good beadwork, so she’s probably very popular. i love her dappled pattern and her cute little craft box that is perfectly color coordinated with her outfit.
Happy International Vulture Awareness Day! Bald is beautiful!. Why are they bald? These birds help clean up our environment and keep diseases at bay by eating carcasses. The bald head helps reduce the places bacteria can hide (such as in feathers) while they are digging in for dinner. Their adaptations to deal with carrion don’t stop there though. These birds can literally eat diseases in flesh, and destory them in their guts, that would otherwise contaminate the environment. That’s right, vultures keep humans and other animals healthy!!
However, most of them are suffering and dying out at human hands, and the world will be much worse off without these incredible birds. Vultures all over the world are shot and exposed to intentional, and unintentional, lead and chemical contamination of carcasses. Right now many old world vultures are having their populations devastated by the use of Diclofenac in livestock, which kills vultures soon after they eat from the carcass. Even if you don’t like vultures, this is a problem directly applicable to humans, with the backlash already wreaking havoc in India.
This post contains photos of vultures I’ve been fortunate to meet over the years. My favorite vulture is, of course, the bearded vulture (aka lammergeier), but I don’t have a photo of a live one, only dead ones (study skins at museums). I can’t wait until the day I can meet and interact with a live bearded vulture, but that may only happen in captivity if we don’t tackle the dangers of diclofenac, lead, and persecution, and do so quickly. We are talking vulture species extinctions within the next few years.
Turkey vultures are known for having bald red heads and bad posture. They’re bald for the same reason you can see in one nostril and out the other: because otherwise it would just make such a mess when they ate. People think that vultures are gross because they eat carrion, but I don’t really have a problem with that. Somebody’s got to take care of that business, am I right? But what I DO have a problem with is how they fly. Vultures don’t circle like that because they’re scoping out a sweet piece of highway meat, they do it because they’re able to catch thermal updrafts, and thermal updrafts go in circles. When vultures are flying, they don’t have to work at ALL. They just hang there! Right now, while I’m sitting in a chair with my elbows on a desk so that I don’t have to expend as much energy as it takes to lift my own fucking arms, I’m working harder than a vulture in flight. THAT IS NOT FAIR. This shit is exhausting.
Point Reyes is a beautiful place to visit. We camped out in Mount Tamalpais and awoke at first light. The drive to Point Reyes was quiet and peaceful. We stopped in Point Reyes Station and got some fresh vegan baked goods and almond milk lattes. Once we were on Point Reyes we were surrounded by ancient dairy farms and countless deer. The coyotes and turkey vultures creeped about. And cute little birds sang on the rocks as the winds wooshed and roared as the Elephant Seals bellowed from beyond the steep cliffs as the waves crashed against the rocks. it was a lovely morning.
Despite the best efforts of their human handlers to instill fear of people, these Turkey Vultures became too friendly towards people and can’t go back to the wild.
