Anne Peyton with a Black Vulture; photo by Ed Skaff
Mike Buckley
SaddleBrooke Nature Club opened the year with an exciting meeting featuring two live vultures and record attendance. The featured speakers, Anne Peyton and Carol Marshall from Liberty Wildlife in Phoenix, gave outstanding presentations, but the highlight of the program went to Bailey, an adult male Turkey Vulture and Armadillo, an adult female Black Vulture.
Liberty Wildlife began in January 1981 with the mission of caring for injured wild animals in greater Phoenix. They specialize in caring for endangered and threatened species. Liberty also provides education programs. Liberty Wildlife moved to a state-of-the-art facility in 2016 and cared for over 6000 animals.
Imagine a typical summer scene at SaddleBrooke. A dozen or more Turkey Vultures, known as a Kettle, soaring in the thermals all looking for their favorite meal of roadkill! The idea of eating carrion might not appeal to you, but these amazing birds have a lot to offer. In fact, it is said in Arizona that vultures are under contract with Waste Management as offsite cleanup specialists!
Carol and Anne stated that vultures are a favorite of young children because of two character traits used for their protection, projectile vomiting and urinating on their legs and feet. These fantastic birds can even eat food tainted with Botulism or Anthrax and their digestive systems render these diseases harmless.
Vultures are scavengers and frequently go long periods without food. Gorging is in order when they do find a delicious meal of roadkill. In fact, it is not unusual for a vulture to eat so much food that the added weight makes flight impossible. Imagine a coyote happening upon the scene deciding to eat a vulture that can’t fly. Bad news for the vulture, but by vomiting the vulture quickly gets back to flying weight and the strong acidity of their digestive fluids is very unappealing as it lands on the predator. The acidic fluids and built in antibiotics in the urine kill bacteria and parasites picked up when walking through their meals.
Arizona hosts three of the 22 species of New World and Old World vultures, the Turkey Vulture, the Black Vulture and the California Condor. The Turkey Vulture, with a large red head and ivory beak on adults, is the most widespread of New World vultures, ranging from Canada to southern South America. The Black Vulture, identified by a short tail and all black head, is the most abundant of vulture species. The California condor is an endangered species and can be seen in northern Arizona around the Grand Canyon.
Our speakers ended with an important message. Vultures, raptors and all other predators are threatened by the use of poisons for rodent control. It remains in the system as it moves up the chain of predators. That means that when an owl eats a pack rat and then a coyote eats the owl, they all die of rat poison. Their solution is to use snap or live traps for varmints.