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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his wife, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Brady Preheim, Marty Rowe, President Elon Musk, President Trump, Stephan Miller, Mike Johnson, J.D. Vance, Vlad Putin, Ted Cruz, Kamala Harris, Trump’s MAGA followers, or my neighbor’s dogs. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Bill’s Standard Disclaimer
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Buzzards, A Friend to Humans and Animals Alike
The Truth About Buzzards
Vultures or Turkey Buzzards circle the sky, when you see them, you think, oh… there is something dead around. As kids, we would lay still for hours in the hay field, knowing if we laid there long enough one of those damn buzzards would surely fly down, land and try to eat us. Boy, were we mistaken. But it was nice to lay out there in the hay field with not a care in the world.
All that circling they did was because vultures are soaring animals and so they ride what are called thermals. These thermals are columns of rising air caused by the sun unevenly heating Earth's surface. Warmer air is less dense than cooler air, so above heated ground, pockets of air become lighter and rise, creating an updraft.
Usually, the thermals are tornado shaped: They are small and weak near the ground, making vultures to turn in small circles when low down, but as the air gets warmer higher up, the thermals get larger, and the birds move in larger circles.
Vultures, and other raptors like eagles, buzzards and kites, use these thermals as invisible elevators to gain altitude, and then as highways to travel around while expending little energy. The birds can either stay circling the same thermal, or use some extra energy to flap off in search of another free ride.
So most of the time when you see a vulture circling, it is just staying up there where the thermals are best, saving energy and looking for carrion, or a dead animal, to eat, or maybe even smelling it out, some species, such as turkey vultures have an excellent sense of smell and pick up the scent of a chemical called ethyl mercaptan released as a dead body decays to find carrion in dense forests without seeing visual cues.
Once the birds have located possible food, they may circle to check that the animal is indeed dead and whether any large carnivores have already opened up the carcass which makes it easier for a vulture to eat, and also checking to see if the coast is clear, so the birds can safely descend and land to partake in their feast.
Some people believe that vultures spread diseases, which is absolutely not true, the birds eat dead and decaying animal carcasses including roadkill, but they are preventing disease rather than spreading it. They are nature's cleanup crew.
This is how they can prevent the transfer of disease from an infected dead animal. This is because vulture stomachs contain a mix of strong acid and lethal bacteria, and if they feed on an animal carcass infected with anthrax, rabies, salmonella or cholera, for example, the pathogens are killed off in their stomachs and can no longer spread.
India realized the importance of vultures the hard way. The birds were once abundant there, but more than two decades ago, they began dying because of the use of diclofenac, a non-steroidal painkiller for cattle. Vultures that fed on carcasses of animals treated with the drug got kidney failure and died. By the mid-1990s, the vulture population had plummeted to near-zero. This meant bacteria and infections, including rabies, spread from infected carcasses that the vultures would otherwise have eaten, leading to the deaths of about half a million people between 2000 and 2005.
Tracking vultures with GPS units also affords people with another benefit, by helping identify where poaching is happening. There are maybe thousands of vultures out there with GPS units on them, transmitting their whereabouts. Africa is using GPS-tagged vultures to catch poachers, because vultures find carcasses before the authorities do and congregate around it. If there are a lot of vultures, it means there's a big carcass, so it might be poaching, and faster to investigate. Vultures are helping people in many ways.
So, the next time you look at a Vulture or a Turkey Buzzard, I hope you have a better understanding and respect for these somewhat not so pretty but essential birds. They do us humans a great service and we should be grateful for them.
Tammy
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