A Wake of Vultures?

I met a group of vultures at Washington Valley Park last autumn when I noticed a bunch of them in a patch of trees between the Washington Valley Reservoir and Newman's Lane. As you can see from the 1st photo, even a casual glance in their direction made it clear there were large birds up there. A quick look through my binoculars confirmed what I pretty much knew, that these were vultures.

November 29, 2022 at Washington Valley Park
Photo 251085840, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Similar to when I saw a rafter of Wild Turkeys, I wondered what you're supposed to call a group of vultures. This webpage provided me with 3 candidates:

  • A colony of vultures. This certainly suggests a group, though I wonder if it implies more cooperation and cohesiveness than a group of mixed-species vultures really represents. Also, a colony sounds a little more geographically persistent than I'd like for birds that won't stay in these particular trees for more than a few hours. Perhaps I'd be inclined to describe a group of vultures breeding and raising children in the same general area as a colony.
  • A committee of vultures. This does a better job of representing a gathering that's not tied to a specific location. And I think I like this term for vultures gathering around a carcass, where the arguing, bickering, and pecking order probably does bear a resemblance to a committee. But these vultures didn't appear to be doing anything more than resting; I'm not sure there's enough interaction going on to constitute a committee.
  • A wake of vultures. I think this is my favorite since both wakes and vultures are associated with death. I guess the only weakness to this collective term is that while a death leading to a human wake is frequently a somber, mournful affair, a death leading to a wake of vultures probably results in a happy time of riotous feasting.

I'm not sure how canonical the terms above are; none are documented on Wikipedia's webpage on collective animal names.
November 29, 2022 at Washington Valley Park
Photo 251085638, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

While most of the vultures in this particular wake were Turkey Vultures (see above), there was at least 1 Black Vulture in there too (see below).

November 29, 2022 at Washington Valley Park
Photo 251085641, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

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