By Scott Finley

(This article was first published in the Around Here Magazine fall 2025 issue)

“Look alive!”, I cried out.  “Buzzard aloft!”  Having heard this many times before, my son ignored me.  The rest of the third graders looked at me in puzzlement.    

I was taking my son’s class for a short nature walk near his school when a shadow passed in front of me.  I looked up and saw several large, dark birds overhead, riding a thermal, smelling the air for a meal of rotting meat.  Third graders are quite lively.  Elephants move through the jungle quieter than a gaggle of rambunctious third graders let out of a classroom on a lovely early fall morning.  I knew we were safe.  

The birds circled and soared, dipping their wings and catching every breath of the thermal rising from the warming Foothills.  Soon they were on their way, surfing the wind currents as they searched for their next meal, which could be miles away.   Their efficiency in riding the air is such that they can soar as much as 100 miles in a day. 

If there is one bird that you can count on seeing up in our Foothills skies pretty much year around, it is the turkey vulture.  Some people may be put off by the connotations of the appellation “vulture” (when was the last time you heard the term “you old buzzard” used with great affection?), but the turkey vulture is a fascinating bird, and necessary in our environment.  

First and foremost, the turkey vulture performs a most important task as a scavenger and carrion-eater.  It serves as an essential link in the chain of clearing dead animals from the environment.  Its red, featherless head is an evolutionary adaptation to the fact that feeding by sticking its head into a rotting carcass is a very dirty business.  Under such circumstances, a head without feathers is far easier to keep clean than one with feathers.  

Plus, it finds its meals primarily by smell.  Most birds have a very limited sense of smell, so they locate their prey by sight.  The turkey vulture has excellent visual acuity, but its secret weapon is that it owns the largest olfactory bulb of any bird.  I don’t know what a turkey vulture smells like, but they can really smell, reportedly detecting the pungent odor of a rotting carcass in the range of a few parts per trillion from a distance of several miles. 

The turkey vulture has a couple of other habits that many may find less than endearing, but which I think are brilliant and their “ick” factor amused my third graders no end. When threatened, they defend themselves by vomiting on their assailant–and you can image the deterrent factor given what they eat!  Turkey vultures, like all birds, lack sweat glands.   They have come up with a unique way to cool themselves, by spraying urine on their legs, which then evaporates, though no doubt it leaves a unique scent.    

The turkey vulture is the only New World vulture that you will see in the Foothills, but I can’t resist the opportunity to say a word on behalf of The Comeback Kid–the California Condor.  With its bald head and somber plumage, it resembles a turkey vulture, but with a wingspan of ten feet—four feet wider than the turkey—you wouldn’t mistake it for anything else.  Quite wide ranging in the Pleistocene, it probably hasn’t been seen soaring over the Foothills for hundreds of years and was on the way to extinction for a variety of reasons, but due to the tireless efforts of many government agencies and private groups, it is soaring over California again.   Your closest chance of catching a glimpse of this magnificent bird is either at Pinnacles National Park or along the Big Sur coast.  Go see it and marvel at what has been called the B-52 Bomber of the Skies.

The turkey vulture has long been considered a member of the category of birds termed raptors, also known as birds of prey, though it has been recently linked more closely with storks than other raptors.  The blanket term “raptor” is used by ornithologists for the birds of the Order Falconiformes that includes hawks, falcons, eagles, and owls. In a future column, we’ll explore some of the other fascinating raptors we see in the skies of our Foothills.

Scott Finley is a long-time resident of El Dorado County, and an avid birder.