One of Saskatchewan’s most unique birds, the turkey vulture has some strange habits. It eats rotten animals, chooses to lay its eggs on the ground instead of in a nest, defecates on its own legs to cool itself when its hot, smells terrible, and vomits in the face of danger. If that doesn’t portray a pleasant image in your mind, looking at its picture won’t help, as it is not one of Saskatchewan’s ‘good looking’ birds. Turkey vultures have dark brown to black plumage and a bald red head, which resembles that of a turkey; hence it was given the name turkey vulture. While turkey vultures may not be pretty birds to look at, they are fascinating birds that are valuable to our ecosystem, as they clean the countryside of dead and decaying animals.

The turkey vulture is a 61 to 84 cm long bird with a 1.8 metre (6 foot) wingspan. They can weigh up to 2.27 kilograms (five pounds), and are dark on top, with the bottom of their wings and tail a lighter shade of grey. Turkey vultures cannot be mistaken for any other bird, as they have a bald red coloured head, and legs, due to their diet of carrion. Turkey vultures stick their heads in dead, decaying carcasses to feed, so the bald head and neck keeps them clean, where a bird with a feathered head would suffer, as their feathers would become dirty, sticky, and stinky.

These efficient scavengers have a unique way of finding food. Turkey vultures are one of few birds in North America that have an acute sense of smell. Their beaks have wide nostrils that are open from one side of their beak in a straight line to the other. They use this strong sense of smell with their ocular abilities to search out dead animals. Turkey vultures are not picky eaters and will feed on animals large or small and can often be seen consuming road kill, on the edge of Saskatchewan’s roads and highways. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so when no carcasses can be found, turkey vultures will sometimes feed on decaying vegetable matter or live insects, though this is very rare. Their main food, carrion, is usually, rotten, stinky, and can even be diseased. This is no problem for the turkey vulture, as their stomachs can handle most types of bacteria from diseased animals, without any negative side effects.

When most people hear the word vulture, they think of a large bird circling the sky over a nearly dead animal, awaiting a fresh feast. Turkey vultures do indeed circle the Saskatchewan skies, taking advantage of warm air thermals, allowing them to soar with very little effort. Turkey vultures are one of the only birds that hold their wings upward when soaring, creating a shallow “V” shape, which allows them to soar for hours on thermals, without flapping their wings.

Once only found soaring in southern Saskatchewan, turkey vultures are expanding their range northward in the province, partly due to the increasing availability of nesting areas because of the increase of abandoned farm buildings in the province. Turkey vultures do not make an actual nest. Instead, they lay their eggs on the ground, in a hollow tree, in a cave, or in an old abandoned barn or farmhouse. With a shift in Saskatchewan’s population from rural to urban, the increase in abandoned farm buildings is creating more nesting habitat for turkey vultures, as windowless buildings in treed areas provide perfect nesting sites. Two white eggs with brown spots are usually laid in early May. Both parents incubate the eggs for 38 to 40 days, and by mid to late June, helpless white vulture chicks are born. The chicks are fed by both parents through regurgitation and approximately two and a half months later, are old enough to experience their first flight.

Young Turkey Vultures have one summer to master the art of flight, as they are migratory birds that fly south in the fall. The breeding range of the turkey vulture includes southern Canada and the northern United States, but turkey vultures migrate as far as the southern tip of South America. They are very adaptable birds, as they live in a variety of climates from our Saskatchewan summers, to the dry savannah deserts, to the tropical forests of South America.

Unlike flocks of geese, you will never hear a flock of turkey vultures overhead migrating south, as they have no syrinx (voice box). This means they are completely silent, except for the ability to grunt and hiss. When turkey vultures find themselves in danger, they have a unique defence mechanism. Both chicks and adults vomit their last meal in the direction of their foe, surprising it with the horrid smell of its stomach contents.

The population of turkey vultures is increasing in Saskatchewan, and they are becoming a more familiar site in the grass, parkland, and even the southern Boreal Forest areas of the province. The home of North America’s only turkey vulture tagging program is in Saskatchewan, where young birds are tagged with wing tags that contain a number on it. When people report sightings of tagged birds, their migratory paths and other information about the birds can then be tracked. Birds that have been tagged in Saskatchewan have been seen as far away as Costa Rica and Venezuela! If you spot a turkey vulture with a green wing tag containing a number in large white print, jot down the location, date, and number of the tag and call 1-306-244-0742 to report a sighting.

While they maybe dirty, stinky, and have some strange habits, turkey vultures are indeed one of our most unique birds in the province. What they lack in looks, they make up for in value, as they clean our fields and ditches of diseased and decaying carcasses, making turkey vultures an important part, of our wildlife.