All turkey vultures are not the same

As we start into warm weather, the road kills along the sides of the road will begin to ripen more quickly and make themselves much more obvious than they did in the cooler weather of March and April.

Fortunately, Mother Nature provides cleanup solutions of her own for the dead animals, the main solution coming in the form of the turkey vultures, also known as turkey buzzards or just plain buzzards. These huge birds fly in and clean up most road kill and other dead creatures to rid the land (and roadsides) of rotting carcasses.

Turkey vultures are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, they cannot be hunted or killed. They have few natural predators. One interesting feature of these birds is that they cannot sing or make noise as other birds do since they lack vocal cords. They can only grunt or make a low hissing sound.

As they circle in the air, they can detect gas from decaying animals 12 to 24 hours after their death, which shows just how sensitive the vulture’s sense of smell is. According to Wikipedia, turkey vultures range from southern Canada to the southern part of South America and have a wingspan of up to 6 feet while weighing only 5 pounds or less.

For the most part, turkey vultures have a red hairless head and feast only on carcasses that have been dead for 24 hours or more. However, there is a blackhead vulture that plays by different rules and too often just does not have the patience to wait for animals to die. In the past few years, these blackhead vultures have been moving into Ohio, though currently not in large numbers. Blackheads tend to be slightly smaller than the redhead vultures, but they are more aggressive and are even aggressive toward the redheads.

There have been reports of blackheads killing newborn calves in this county this past year. A farmer in another county reported that as he was watching a cow that had just calved, a group of 8 to 10 blackheads spread in a semi-circle across the pasture and started backing the cow and calf into a corner, trying to separate the calf from the cow. That is when the farmer stepped in and drove the vultures away.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture Services, blackhead vultures are now being seen throughout Ohio. (For information on how to legally protect livestock when blackhead vultures are observed, contact the USDA Wildlife Services.)

Both types of vultures are important to our ecosystem and are highly important to cleansing the environment. They are even fun to study if one has the stomach for it. But even though they look similar and play similar roles in cleaning up our roadsides and rural areas, they are not quite the same.

Caution and vigilance are needed, especially around young and small animals, when the blackhead vultures appear. They appear reluctant to wait for nature to run its course and are insistent on breaking the rules to get ahead in the food chain race.

Chuck Bell is a former 4-H Educator and Muskingum County Farm Bureau member.

This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: All turkey vultures are not the same