Click to Enlarge Vultures conserve energy by slowing their metabolic rate at night, allowing their body temperature to drop up to 4 degrees. They spread their wings to the morning sunlight to absorb its warming rays.   Vulture Culture by Charlotte Overby photography by Jim Rathert Turkey vultures are large, graceful birds that seem to float in gentle circles in the sky. They hardly have to flap at all to stay aloft for hours at a time. They hover and dip with the wind, their wings balanced in a V-shape. They are beautiful, elegant flyers. See one on the ground, however, and one word comes to mind: u-g-l-y. That's because turkey vultures have bald, red, wrinkly heads. Their eyes appear to have giant bags under them. The feathers around their necks can sometimes look a little scruffy. And besides, if you've seen one on the ground, you probably saw it eating something . . . something dead. Not a pretty picture. But somebody has to eat dead and decaying animal carcasses—maggots and worms can't do all the work. Vultures play an important role in the environment because they cleanly and efficiently dispose of dead things. They eat animals that may have died of old age or an injury. And they eat lots of road kill. You may have seen three or four vultures at once feasting on a dead possum in the road. Given their diet and the way they eat, vultures are well adapted. Having a bald head makes it easier for a vulture to plunge its beak into the body cavity of the animal it's eating. The feathers around their necks look a little like a bib and are spread out in a way that makes them easy to clean. They have hooked beaks which are useful for tearing flesh. They also have rough tongues to help gather meat from those hard-to-reach spots. Vultures are great flying machines. They sense and take advantage of "thermals"—warm currents of air that rise up from the ground—to help keep them aloft. And if you look closely, you may see that the first five feathers on each wing are slotted, or spread apart like fingers. This adaptation helps them soar. Riding thermals, they can soar overhead for hours without using much energy. And since thermals don't form until the sun has heated the ground, vultures tend to sleep late. They perch in the branches of large craggy trees, often in groups, and generally don't fly until after 9 a.m. Vultures are able to go long periods without eating, but when they do find a flattened raccoon, dead squirrel or some other tasty morsel, they often gorge themselves. They can eat up to 25 percent of their body weight and sometimes have a difficult time flying after they are so stuffed. In that case, they squat on the ground to digest. If something threatens them, they throw up an icky stream of liquid with surprising force. It tends to work; most would-be attackers turn on their heels and run. So how does a vulture find something dead when it's so high in the sky? Other large soaring birds, such as hawks, eagles and falcons have keen eyesight. Vultures probably rely on their keen vision, too, when it comes time to spot that fresh road kill. But vultures have something that most other birds do not: a good sense of smell. Vultures have well developed olfactory lobes—the portion of the brain responsible for recognizing odors. Biologists have conducted studies with dead animals, placing some out in the open and hiding some under leaves and branches. Vultures found the hidden carcasses just as quickly as those that were in the open, suggesting they use their sense of smell, as well as their eyesight, to find food. Even though most of what vultures eat is disgusting to people, they sometimes do draw the line. If they have recently eaten, they will sometimes pass on something truly rotten. And if they have a choice between something decayed or something freshly killed, they generally choose the fresh stuff. One researcher reported seeing vultures polish off a dead skunk—everything but the skunk's scent gland, that is. How can a bird that flies so beautifully in the air look so beastly up close? Well, when it comes to vultures, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They may not have the looks, but we can be glad they're willing to eat things we wouldn't want to touch with a 10-foot pole. Vulture Tidbits: "Buzzard" is a nickname for vulture. The vulture family in North America includes turkey and black vultures, which are abundant. But it also includes the California condor, one of our country's most endangered birds. Charles Darwin observed a turkey vulture in the 1830s and described it as a "disgusting bird, with its bald scarlet head formed to wallow in putridity." Of the vultures found in North America, only turkey vultures locate food by smell. Black vultures and the California condor do not have this ability. Black vultures wait for turkey vultures to circle and congregate around food, then they hang around and wait to join in on the eating. Sometimes Snoopy, Charlie Brown's dog, sits on top of his doghouse and pretends he is a vulture.