Pennsylvania Game News - April 2022 - 64

Wings of Expansion
C
HANGE in the natural world is most often subtle, not easily
seen. But sometimes change happens before our eyes, traced
across the open sky. That's how it is with black vultures. Some
currently winter here, but most Pennsylvania nesters will soar back
from their tropical haunts on the gusts of early spring.
We're so accustomed to the stately grace of turkey vultures that
a casual glance at a band of big dark birds might miss the black
vulture's recent inroads. Close inspection, though, will prove
they are different creatures. Black vultures are smaller, and their
wings appear stubby, rounded at the margins. Their stump of tail
barely projects rearward. The surest clue is the dull whitish swath
on the underside of the wings' outer reaches. Black vultures also
fly differently than turkey vultures with frequent labored flapping.
Black vultures already were common in southern Lancaster
County when I lived there in the late 1970s; still, even there they
were recent arrivals. Historically at home in southern states, and Central and
South America, black vultures have been probing northward since the late 20th
century. Their first incursions into Pennsylvania were the Susquehanna Valley,
and later the Piedmont. But every summer now, I see them more frequently
in western Pennsylvania, beyond the Allegheny heights, clumped and bristling
atop a deer carcass along the highway, or clustered in the far corner of some
pasture, cleaning up the cast-off remains of a slaughtered cow. The most recent
Atlas of Breeding Birds in Pennsylvania notes that black vultures increased by
more than 10% annually since the 1970s, making them " one of the most rapidly
increasing species in the Commonwealth. "
Black vultures are adaptable in what they eat, and there is some concern that
they prey on calves and lambs, though the extent of that threat is under study.
In a southern state where my son lives, I saw more than 50 black and turkey
vultures massed on a muddy flat beside a suburban wetland. Others peered
down from trees. Curious, I approached as the birds flapped noisily away. The
dried mud was littered with small dead fish marooned when the water receded.
Black vultures find their food solely by sight, but they are intelligent birds,
known to follow the more olfactorily-gifted turkey vultures drawn to carrion by
scent.
Ornithologists cite warming winters and ubiquitous road-killed deer as the
engines of black vulture expansion.
Watch the skies, for a clear view of change on the wing.
64

Pennsylvania Game News - April 2022

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