Black Vultures

     A few days ago, I was in a public park at the head of the Chesapeake Bay to look for terns, gulls and other kinds of water birds.  I saw individuals of each of those species, but I also noted more than two dozen black vultures in two, sometimes three, groups, in the park.  They didn't bother anybody and they seemed unafraid of people being close to them.  Incidentally, I've never heard of these vultures, or turkey vultures, ever threatening anybody. 
     During the few hours I was in the park, those black vultures mostly stood around together on short-grass lawns, but occasionally some of them raided dumpsters, supposedly to find food.  I was so close to them I could hear their vocalizations that sounded like muffled, distant barks.  And I noticed they were absolutely clean and handsome birds that walked about a bit like large, lumbering chickens.  They were a joy for me to study a little while the opportunity was available.
     I have always enjoyed spotting black vultures in the air and on the ground.  They are almost as large as wild turkeys, but with shorter legs, often obvious in the air, usually form flocks of a dozen or score of themselves and can be spotted anytime of the year here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Their flight patterns alternate between short sails and quick, panicky-looking wing beats, unlike the flight patterns of any other vulture, eagle or hawk soaring in the sky.  And when the handsome, robust black vultures are seen close-up or through binoculars on the ground, they all have black body feathers, and naked, black heads and necks.
     Black vultures have been in southeastern Pennsylvania for at least 50 years, having come form farther south where they are abundant.  This species ranges through much of the United States, all of Mexico and  Central America, and much of South America to, and including, Argentina.  They gather each night in treetops in woodland or forest roosts, often in mixed groups with turkey vultures.  And during the day, black vultures watch airborne turkey vultures for clues of dead animals on the ground.  Turkey vultures have a great sense of smell that can detect rotting carcasses by scent quicker than they can by eyesight.  Unfortunately, the aggressive black vultures often chase the more timid turkey vultures off the carcasses the latter species found first.
     Like turkey vultures and bald eagles, black vultures are successful scavengers, eating dead fish, ducks and other critters on the shores of larger waterways and impoundments, edibles from dumpsters and landfills, and dead livestock in fields and cow pastures.  Black vultures prefer larger carcasses so that flocks of themselves can feed together. 
     But like eagles, the aggressive black vultures are predatory when killing opportunities arise.  For example, they often nest near heron nesting rookeries and feed on dead heron chicks, and kill and eat live ones that fell from their treetop nurseries.  Groups of cooperating black vultures will also kill and consume lambs and newborn calves.
     Being adaptable and used to human-made conditions and activities, black vultures often perch in unusual places.  One example is up to 16, or more, black vultures perched on the roofs of a house and adjacent small barn in a woods in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  And they stand in fields near roads and parks where there is no cover.  In the parks they raid dumpsters and, perhaps, are waiting to be fed by picnic participants.
     Black vultures nest in sheltered places, including inside broken-off trees, fallen, hollow logs, small caves, including those in stone quarries, and thickets of vegetation.  Each female of a mated pair lays two eggs per brood and the chicks hatch with a thick covering of white fluff.  There is only one brood each year and both parents feed the chicks until they are fully feathered and able to fly.
     Black vultures are beautiful, interesting additions to the fauna of southeastern Pennsylvania, especially when they are in flight.  And they clean up dead, decaying animals along waterways and impoundments, in fields and everywhere else dead animals may be.  They are well worth our attention and admiration.