I love vultures. I live in Alabama, and they're always lazily wheeling around in the sky. Over the past year, we've had a terrible bout of Bird Flu that killed almost all of the Black vultures but didn't affect the Turkey vultures very much. So there's hardly been any Black vulture sightings in a while. This week I saw two Black vultures up with the typical Turkeys and were glad to see them back!
You can tell the difference simply by looking at their wing undersides. Turkey vultures has a light-colored band on the trailing edge that goes from the shoulder to the tip, while Black vultures have a light color only where the “hand” would be, i.e., the end of the wing. And Turkey vultures are bigger than the blacks. If you get a chance to see them close up, Turkey vultures have red colored skin on their heads, while Black vultures have black skin.
