The Nature of Things

Black vultures among us

December

One can’t seem to swing a dead rodent by the tail and not hit a black vulture at the Green Chimneys School in Patterson. Cousin to the more often seen turkey vultures, black vultures were typically thought of as a southern species. But they do live in New York and several dozen often fill the trees and fence line near the Patterson school’s caged black vultures, Paul Kupchok, Green Chimneys’ wildlife director, told me. I visited the school this week and Kupchock pointed one out to me (see photo).

The school uses farm and wild animals in its therapy programs for emotionally troubled children. Wild black vultures, Kupchok said, routinely gather near the school’s two black vultures, which were both once injured and are unable to be returned to the wild. More social in nature than turkey vultures, one might think they were commiserating with their caged brethern.

But Kupchok said the visiting birds are probably more interested in the dead mice and rats that are fed to the school’s hawks, owls and vultures. He said when the black vultures first showed up about 10 years ago, they brazenly tried to help themselves to the dead rodents in the feed bucket as Kupchok and other staff fed the school’s charges. Now, he said, they are mainly an annoyance – soiling the ground outside the vultures’ cage with their droppings and damaging cage roofs and other structures.

Knowing better now what a black vulture looks like, I wonder if the vultures I wrote about in this post are indeed black and not immature turkey vultures like I first thought. I’m still leaning toward turkey because the black vulture seems to have a lot more white on its wings.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 4:07 pm by Mike Risinit.
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