If there’s one bird I can almost guarantee to see every day from my house, it’s a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura). And while most people are familiar with their high soaring flights, I have been luckily enough to catch them at an entirely different activity: waking up. Almost every morning over the last couple months, as my dog and I are taking our early morning walk, the turkey vultures in my neighborhood are only just starting to stir from their communal roosts. On our way out, I’d notice an intimidating group of 10 or 20 very large birds looking down at me from a nearby tree, where they had bedded up for the night. Even more striking though was that by the time we were on our return trip back to the house, many of the turkey vultures had repositioned themselves onto higher sunnier perches, with their wings held wide as if greeting the morning with open arms. In actuality, the purpose of this position is simply to get warm. Because a turkey vulture’s body temperature drops overnight, in the early mornings vultures will often perch with their wings spread wide (a posture called the “horaltic pose”), exposing as much surface area to the sun as possible to passively raise their body temperature to daytime levels. 

Turkey vultures appear mostly black from a distance but up close you can tell that their feathers are actually dark brown and their featherless head is bright red with a pale bill. As scavengers, turkey vultures play a crucial role in the balance of nature, essentially serving as nature’s clean-up crew by feeding on carrion. One source I read stated that turkey vultures will eat “virtually any dead animal down to the size of a tadpole.” In doing so, they rid the landscape of rotting carcasses and help curb the spread of diseases and bacteria. In order to avoid illness themselves, turkey vultures have strong enzymes in their stomaches that kill off dangerous toxins and microorganisms that are often found on dead or rotting animals. Another adaptation turkey vultures have for feeding predominantly on carrion is a lack feathers on their heads. This allows these birds to more easily keep themselves clean, despite often inserting their head completely inside the carcass they are eating.