{"id":41835,"date":"2016-08-31T05:31:07","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T11:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=41835"},"modified":"2016-08-31T05:31:07","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T11:31:07","slug":"a-turkey-vulture-kind-of-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/31\/a-turkey-vulture-kind-of-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"A Turkey Vulture Kind Of Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Genus name Cathartes<\/em> means “purifier” and on this morning the Turkey Vultures\u00a0were working hard at deserving the moniker.<\/p>\n

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\"turkey<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/8, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, tip of metal post removed,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many Turkey Vultures on one morning as I saw six days ago near the Promontory Mountains. At one point a flock of 50-60 of them lifted up off their perches when a juvenile Golden Eagle flew in amongst them and there were smaller groups of them along much of the length of Promontory Road.<\/p>\n

This bird was one of a group of about 20 birds that had obviously been feeding on a dead cow in a shallow ravine\u00a0next to the road.\u00a0 I stopped to photograph some of the resting, preening vultures but my stay there was an\u00a0unpleasant one because the cow was extremely ripe and aromatic. Turkey Vultures are known for spreading their wings to the sun like this and they do it for a variety of reasons, including using ultraviolet radiation from the sun’s rays to kill potentially harmful bacteria on their plumage from their last meal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"turkey<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before it eventually took off this vulture performed a wing stretch but kept its eye on me as it did so. The actual color of their legs is pink but they’re usually stained white by their own uric acid.\u00a0Like some storks, Turkey Vultures deliberately defecate on their legs and feet as a cooling mechanism.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"turkey<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adult Turkey Vultures have white bills but this one is discolored by a gob of some kind of debris, very possibly semi-liquid cow (sorry, I’m sure that’s something you didn’t want to think about…).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"turkey<\/p>\n

1\/1000, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

In case you’ve never seen one, here’s a juvenile. By next spring its head will turn red and it will attain its full adult appearance some months after that.<\/p>\n

Some folks don’t\u00a0appreciate the appearance or life style of Turkey Vultures but because of their purifying role in the environment that stinky old cow won’t be around long and as one who travels Promontory Road regularly I\u00a0enthusiastically applaud their efforts.<\/p>\n

It took me quite some time to get that nasty smell out of my nostrils and my pickup\u00a0after I left the scene.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Genus name Cathartes means “purifier” and on this morning the Turkey Vultures were working hard at deserving the moniker.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,8,392,910],"tags":[689,913,912,3081,136,190,3082,2524,911,311],"class_list":["post-41835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-turkey-vultures","tag-box-elder-county","tag-carrion","tag-cathartes-aura","tag-dead-cow","tag-feeding","tag-juvenile","tag-leg-color","tag-promontory-mountains","tag-turkey-vulture","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/turkey-vulture-0902-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-aSL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}