VULTURES 
115 
Vultures cannot be observed to best advantage in Canada. In the 
southern United States they may be seen every hour of the day floating on 
motionless wings high in the air, searching the country with telescopic eye 
for carrion. When an animal dies (or even before) it is sighted, and a 
black form drops beside it from the sky; shortly it is joined by another, 
and another, and soon where not a bird was previously to be seen, many 
are struggling about the unclean feast. The question as to whether vultures 
find their odoriferous food by scent or by sight is still a debatable one. 
Though formerly food finding was regarded as a visual function later 
observation has suggested that the elaborate nasal development found in 
the species is more serviceable in this direction than early experimentation 
indicated. The flight of the vultures is one of the wonders of the physicist. 
They hang suspended in the air or even rise beyond the limits of human 
vision, without visible effort. On motionless, outspread pinions they glide 
in great ascending spirals, mounting higher and higher, and then, still 
circling, maintain their positions for hours at a time, without a single 
apparent stroke of the wing. The act of thus rising in the air without 
visible expenditure of power was for long regarded as one of the mysteries 
of bird life until man, obtaining mastery of the air himself, found that he 
could do approximately likewise with soaring and gliding planes by taking 
advantage of hitherto barely suspected upward currents of air. 
Economic Status. The vultures are not birds of prey in the usual 
acceptation of the term, for they do not kill what they eat but feed entirely 
on carrion. They have been accused, and perhaps justly, of accelerating 
death at times, but they never attack an animal that is not in the last 
stages of exhaustion. In Canada the species is of little economic import- 
ance, but in the south their scavenging is an important safeguard to the 
health of the more careless communities, and in many places they are 
rigorously protected by law for sanitary reasons. 
325. Turkey Vulture, turkey buzzard, le vautour commun. Catharles aura. 
L, 30. All dark, very nearly black, with head and neck naked or, in juveniles, covered with 
sparse, greyish brown, fur-like down. 
Figure 173 
Turkey Vulture; scale, 
Appearance in flight. 
Distinctions. Large size, all dark coloration, hooked beak with long, extensive cere, 
naked or downy head coloured red in the adult (Figure 172), and weak, chicken-like, 
rather than raptorial, claws mark it plainly as a vulture. The Turkey Vulture is the 
one most likely to be seen in Canada and the only species to be expected in the west. There 
is a record of the California Condor in southern British Columbia, but it seems to have 
an uncertain basis. 
