The Turkey Vulture is Michigan's cleanup crew — a big, black scavenger that rides thermals for hours on wings held in a shallow V, rocking side to side without a flap. Up close the naked red head looks unlovely; in the air, few birds are more graceful. They find carrion largely by smell, an ability almost unique among birds, detecting gases of decay from high altitude.
Vultures return to Michigan in March — kettles of them spiraling north are a genuine spring sign — and roost communally in big dead trees and on towers. An acid stomach lets them neutralize pathogens that would fell other animals, quietly protecting ecosystems (and us) from disease.
Carrion, found by scent and shared at carcasses with strict pecking orders. They prefer it fresh, take almost no live prey, and their digestive tract destroys anthrax, botulism, and rabies pathogens along the way.
Watch the wings: vultures soar with wings raised in a shallow V and teeter side to side; eagles and Red-tails hold them flat and steady. Up close, the small naked red head settles it.
Remarkably well — they detect ethyl mercaptan, a gas of decay, from hundreds of feet up. Pipeline crews once found leaks by watching where vultures circled over the odorized gas.
Just a thermal. Vultures gather wherever warm air rises — rooftops, parking lots, ridgelines — to gain free altitude. The circling "kettle" is commuting, not foreboding.
Roughly March to November. The heart of the season falls from April through October, and departure is usually more gradual and less noticeable than arrival.
It is a juvenile. Young Turkey Vultures have a dull gray-black head and a dark-tipped bill for their first year, which is why they get reported as Black Vultures. The featherless red head develops over their first winter.
Three different words for three different situations, and vulture watchers use all of them: a kettle circling on a thermal, a committee perched or roosting, and a wake feeding at a carcass. Fall kettles along the Great Lakes shorelines can hold hundreds of birds.
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