Behaviour and Diet

Behaviour and Diet

Canadian Turkey Vultures spend the winter in places like El Salvador and Panama in Central America. They start their trip north in late February to mid-March. It is said they fly at about 65 kilometers per hour (40 miles per hour) for 9 hours a day to reach their northern summer homes. Some travel as far as 6,000 kilometers (3,600 miles) to their breeding grounds, so they could be in the air, hardly eating at all, for as long as 10 days. When they get here, they're hungry enough to eat anything. That's good, because all the animals who starved, or froze, or were killed by predators over the winter, are just thawing out and getting really smelly. If something they're eating is really messy, they just close their nostrils, slide the clear membranes over their eyes, and dive in. To vultures, it's a banquet. In the early fall they head south again. There are so many migrating, that it takes from mid-October until mid-November for all of them to pass. Some towns in Mexico, for example, have reported seeing 1,000 fly over them in just one day. They have also been seen climbing high in the air to get above thunder storms. Normally, they don't stop except to sleep. MORE! [LH] {BI} {EH}