Posted on 02/16/2013 6:09:13 PM PST by Redcitizen
Thanks to a mild winter, swarms of turkey vultures have made themselves at home in Shelby, N.C., but town residents are wary of their neighbors. While the birds normally pass through the city while migrating south for the winter, the vultures have been sticking around this year, swarming lawns and making residents nervous. "We are just not getting cold enough to push them along," Kristen Duren, an intern with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension, the state agriculture service, told ABC's Charlotte, N.C. affiliate WSOC-TV. "What used to be five to 10 birds is going up to 150 birds."
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It could also be that because of the poor economy, there is more discrete supplemental hunting going on and more vulture goodies to be had from deer and turkey kills than if people were eating storebought meat. I notice since the economy turned bad here that hunting has become more of an occupation than a sport, and the wildlife that were almost ridiculously friendly during the boom have become much more nocturnal and wary of people than before.
I once saw a flock of migrating turkey vultures completely eat a large dead dog in two days. It was impressive to me.
I once worked in an office where a nesting pair of turkey vultures took up residence on the balcony. We named them Sid & Nancy.
I looked around trying to see what it could have been interested in but couldn't find or smell anything but lemons and lemon blossoms. I know they can be attracted by even the smallest thing like a dead wren or mouse so I looked closely all around, to no avail. Maybe it was just coming down for wsater, but it was weird seeing him there. Or maybe it was embarassed that it got caught in the unseemly act of sniffing flowers.
Always plenty of dead deer or other road kill to keep them happy. I’ve had five of this in my yard resting that I could walk right up too. Those suckers huge. I won’t want to hit one with a car.
this = these
Used to have a plethora of species at the feeder. Now I find myself chasing crows. Omen?
They could live off of Michael Moore for a year.
That was a Vicious thing to do...
They are the size of friggin’ Pteradactyl here in Georgia.
I’m in NC but about two hours north, near the VA border. Several weeks ago I had a sort of Alfred Hitchcock moment while driving. I passed a very large, old dead oak tree, still standing alongside the road, and it was completely filled with Turkey Buzzards.
That’s creepy looking, I thought to myself as I drove past, wonder why they’re there? And, just as I got past the tree enough to see the ground on the opposite side, I saw the large buck lying there dead. I guess it had been hit by a car or truck and made it that far before it collapsed and died.
I didn’t know that about black vultures. I thought all ‘new world vultures’ located food by smell, but you are right.
I once saw a program where a handler had this huge griffon Vulture and asked the host of the program to smell it. Supposedly it smelled like fresh laundry, like actually really good. The handler had a deathlock on its neck so it wouldn’t pluck out any eyeballs though.
Freegards
They’re actually pretty scrawny or so I’ve been told, that size is comprised of mostly feathers and bones. Still wouldn’t want to tangle with one personally, but a barn owl would do more damage to your car if you were to hit one.
I would say 3 days for a Lib...if the vultures had sufficient ketchup.
A few years back I saw a lot of vultures jut east of my house. The trees were full of them, and there were several sitting in a circle, all facing inward, on the railroad track. All just setting like they were having a conclave or some type of meeting.
A few minutes later they all flew away and I went to where they were they had been setting in a circle to see what was there.
No blood, no hair, no hide, no bones. Nothing.
I never could figure what they were having a vulture meeting for.
“... would that make even buzzards vomit?”
No joke, don’t ever really frighten one of those buzzard-type birds. They react by puking and it ain’t a good smell. I read a story years ago about a pilot who ran into a flight of buzzards in his two-seater biplane. One wound up vomiting in the open cockpit ahead of the pilot and he said he couldn’t get on the ground fast enough and hose it out.
Do you ever go north on I-75 from Atlanta?
There’s a big pylon billboard around mile marker 282, a little south of the Allatoona Rd exit, on the east side of I-75, where big gaggles (conclaves? What do you call a bunch of vultures gathered together?) hang out.
I swear I’ve seen more than 50 at a time there.
I’m pretty sure this is the location:
The billboard is the V-shaped thing off to the right.
I saw them most recently when we went by there on a Friday in late January, and had the presence of mind to have Siri take a note as to the mile marker.
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