I take it they have different diets?
Why weren’t the Turkey vultures affected?
Good question. They both eat road kill, dead carcasses, etc. I asked AI. Answer:
Black vultures died in huge numbers because their highly social feeding and roosting behavior created perfect conditions for H5N1 to spread rapidly. They also frequently eat other dead black vultures (high cannibalism rate).
Turkey vultures, being more solitary, less aggressive at carcasses, and less clustered at roosts, simply didn’t give the virus the same transmission opportunities.
And emerging evidence suggests black vultures may also be biologically more susceptible to this strain of H5N1.
Black vultures are rebounding across the Southeast, and Alabama is part of that recovery. The decline you saw locally was real, but the regional population trend is strongly upward again.