Black Vulture

Here's a picture from March of a Black Vulture surveying the area around one of the Raritan River Greenway. Though my link shows them as "uncommon" in New Jersey, that might be a slightly out of date map. Although the Turkey Vulture is our most common vulture, the Black Vultures are a nontrivial component of our vulture population.

The Black Vulture is generally considered the more aggressive vulture, usually winning carrion disputes with their Turkey Vulture cousins. The only thing that can make good-look identification tricky is that young Turkey Vultures lack the red faces that easily distinguishes the adults of our two vulture species. I'm pretty sure this is a Black Vulture though because of the relatively short tail that Black Vultures have.

These vultures mostly use sight and smell to find dead animals to eat, making them one of the few birds with a good sense of smell. And although they are primarily scavengers, Black Vultures are known to do a little hunting, especially if they find a very young, unattended animal. Their primary role in our ecosystem though is to remove rotting flesh from the environment.

March 3, 2021 at the Raritan River Greenway
Photo 120274172, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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