Warner Corner - October 2008

The Best Nest
Paul Smithson, Interpretive Naturalist

The bunkhouse is dilapidated. A lost cause. It is also my mother's favorite building. When it was first built, the children of the owners of our cabin would sleep in this building; however, since we have owned it no one has slept in it. Until this summer. A bird chose to make a nest in the building. In the past we have had Eastern phoebes build nests on the building but this time the nest took up the entire building and was built by the biggest songbird in North America, the turkey vulture.

The nest itself was little more than a patch of old moss with two eggs in the middle. Usually turkey vultures will nest in a snag or in a cave, but in this case it was a bunkhouse that was left one summer too long to be salvaged. When my mom was checking how much work was needed to save the building she found the nest and surprised the vulture. The vulture took this opportunity to show off the trick it pulls when confronted, it regurgitated with power and speed. My mom ran back to our cabin with the same power and speed!

Turkey vultures are so-named because their heads reminded early naturalists of the American turkey. They are a member of the Cathartidae family and are the most widespread of the new world vultures. For a while they were considered raptors (eagles, hawks, owls) but were removed form that classification and placed with storks. This is an ongoing debate. Many people also know the turkey vulture by its other common name, buzzard.

Vulture eggs are incubated for about 40 days and fledge between 66 and 88 days. Both of the young at the bunkhouse nest survived the summer. We even have photos of their first flights. If a nest is abandoned turkey vultures rarely re-nest. This has caused problems for their populations because they were as hard hit by DDT as Bald Eagles. DDT made the eggs shells too thin and the eggs would not make it through the incubation.

These birds, despite their size, have a skeleton that weighs only 4 ounces. This allows them to take off very quickly from the ground. Our bunkhouse vultures entered through the roof. In order to exit they had to fly straight upward about 10 feet through a hole no larger than a toilet bowl. Once in the air, turkey vultures fly into warm updrafts called thermals, which are warm up-swelling air currents, created by the earth heating up. Once they are in the thermal they spread their wings and soar with very little flapping. They are one of the most efficient soaring birds in North America. Turkey vultures hold their wings in a distinctive way while soaring, forming the shape of a V, which is handy since their name begins with that letter.

Every fall turkey vultures and many other birds migrate to areas where their food is more plentiful. Turkey vultures will migrate to places ranging from the southeast US to the Bahamas and Central America, making journeys up to thousands of miles. The two young born in the bunkhouse will join in this long migration and hopefully will enjoy many years of soaring across the United States looking for their next meal of carrion.