American Turkey Vulture Habitats: Brown Body, Ground Nest, White Egg

Summary: North American turkey vulture habitats in Canada summers and in Mexico and the United States year-round get brown bodies from white eggs in ground nests.

A turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) sidles over to a fish-eating osprey (Pandion haliaetus); Everglades National Park southernmost headquarters, Flamingo, Monroe County, southwestern Florida; Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014, 11:20: Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

North American turkey vulture habitats affect arboriculture, master gardening and master naturalism through Cathartidae condor family carcass-clearing appetites during distribution ranges seasonally in Canada and year-round in Mexico and the United States.

Turkey vultures bear their common name and the scientific name Cathartes aura (golden [or air] purifier) for heads like wild turkeys and for scavenger ecosystem roles. Collisions, poisoning from lead shot in carcasses, predation, shooting and trapping challenge the turkey vulture, described in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1787). Feeding sites within 4.97 to 6.21 miles (8 to 10 kilometers) of roosts draw turkey vultures into permanent, seasonal or temporary communally foraging, nesting, roosting flocks.

Seventeen-year lifespans in Canada summers, Mexico year-round and the United States seasonally or year-round expect temperate to subtropical or tropical caves, cliffs, fields, shores or woodlands.

January through August furnish opportunities for brooding one one- to three-egg clutch in caves, on cliffs or up to 20 feet (6.09 meters) above the ground.

Parents-to-be gather no materials for nests in dark, secluded, undisturbed sites in abandoned buildings, hollow logs or rotting stumps or on cave ledges or low cliffs. Nests house elliptical to oval, granulated or smooth, non- or semi-glossy, 2.44- to 3.27-inch- (62- to 83-millimeter-) long, 1.69- to 2.09-inch- (43- to 53-millimeter-) wide eggs. Parents-to-be incubate the cream- or dull-white, brown-, purple-, red-brown-blotched, speckled, splashed or splotched eggs with brown-, purple-, red-brown-blotched, speckled, splashed, spotted overlays 28 to 41 days.

Great horned owls and humans jeopardize juvenile and mature turkey vultures whereas people and raccoons jeopardize eggs, hatchlings and nestlings in North American turkey vulture habitats.

Semi-helpless nestlings open-eyed since hatching know bare heads, blackish skin around bills and eyes, long white down on bodies and sparse, thin, white down on crowns. They quickly learn to live by keen senses of smell since they live off regurgitated food from their parents in locations thereby loaded with carrion scents. They mobilize gray-pink bills into feeding and gray-pink feet and legs into moving around with their parents until, at 11 weeks, they manage their first flights. Adults need animal dung, dead amphibians, birds, fish, insects, mammals and reptiles, live injured or weakened birds and livestock and ripe or rotten fruits and vegetables.

North American turkey vulture habitats up to 4,300 feet (1,310.64 meters) above sea level offer winter-coldest temperatures at minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.77 degrees Celsius).

Ability to fast for two weeks, adaptability to climate and geographic extremes, communal feeding and roosting and keen sight and smell promote turkey vulture life cycles.

Killing external bacteria and lowering body temperature with ammonia-rich, leg-drenching excrement and spreading wings toward the sun to raise body temperatures qualify as successfully adaptive behavior. Brown-bodied, long-tailed, long-winged, pink-legged adults retain black underparts, little, naked, red heads and silver-gray flight feathers whereas juveniles reveal blackish, brown-edged back feathers and brown-gray heads. Soaring flight tipping side to side on 5.5- to 6-foot (1.68- to 1.83-meter), rare-flapped, V-held wingspans suggests 4.5-pound (2.04-kilogram), 25- to 32-inch (63.5- to 81.28-centimeter) adults.

Silence other than grunting, hissing and throwing up over intruders tell of foragers, nesters and roosters in North American turkey vulture habitats from Canada through Mexico.

turkey buzzards (Cathartes aura) guarding eggs, illustrated by American painter and draughtsman Edwin L. Sheppard (1837-1904); Thomas G. Gentry, Nests and Eggs of Birds of the United States (1882), Plate XLVIII, opposite page 281: Biodiversity Heritage Library (BioDivLibrary), Public Domain, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

A turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) sidles over to a fish-eating osprey (Pandion haliaetus); Everglades National Park southernmost headquarters, Flamingo, Monroe County, southwestern Florida; Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014, 11:20: Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Osprey_&_Turkey_Vulture_Interaction_(16145036889).jpg; Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith (Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith), CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/slobirdr/16145036889/

turkey buzzards (Cathartes aura) guarding eggs, illustrated by American painter and draughtsman Edwin L. Sheppard (1837-1904); Thomas G. Gentry, Nests and Eggs of Birds of the United States (1882), Plate XLVIII, opposite page 281: Biodiversity Heritage Library (BioDivLibrary), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/50886921193/; Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, Public Domain, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/35136635; via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/nestseggsofbirds00gent/page/n403/mode/1up

For further information:

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Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48453941

Linnaeus, Carl. 1758. "4. Vultur aura." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 86-87. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/726991

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Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41028060

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Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41028138

Peterson, Alan P., M.D. "Cathartes aura (Linnaeus) 1758." Zoonomen: Zoological Nomenclature Resource > Birds of the World -- Current Valid Scientific Avian Names > Cathartiformes > Cathartidae > Cathartes.
Available @ http://www.zoonomen.net/avtax/cath.html

Sharpe, R. (Richard) Bowdler. 1873. "XVI. On a New Species of Turkey Vulture From the Falkland Islands and a New Genus of Old-World Vultures: Catharista falklandica." Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Including Zoology, Botany, and Geology, vol. XI (Fourth Series), no. LXI: 133. London UK: Taylor and Francis.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/25121059

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Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/bub_br_1918_017354-09#page/n9/mode/1up

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Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41718053

Wied, Prinz Maximilian zu. 1839. "1) . . . . Cathartes septentrionales." Reise in Das Innere Nord-America in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834, erster band (vol. I): 162. Coblenz, Germany: J. Hoelscher.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48176190