This is Bird Note.

We're hearing just the sound of wind, because turkey vultures, masterful sky sailors,

are rarely heard.

With wing spans approaching six feet, turkey vultures ride currents of air to make their

spring and fall journeys and to cover the miles of their home range in summer, gliding

on updrafts along hills and escarpments, or pushed along by weather fronts, they rarely

need to flap their wings more than ten times in a row.

To rise above storms, they may ride upward on thermals, disappearing from sight, but when

they circle low, you will not mistake their naked redheads and deeply slotted black primary

feathers, which the wind separates and turns up expressively.

With their wings candid in a dihedral V, turkey vultures tilt up wind from side to side

to catch the stink of carry on, their primary food.

The turkey vultures keen sense of smell often enables them, even though high aloft, to

locate dead animals not found by earthbound scavengers, even carcasses concealed below

a forest canopy.

They're an avian cleanup crew, removing tons of carcasses from the landscape, and they

are skillful and beautiful flyers, using the shifting currents of the sky to carry them

on their way.

For Bird Note, I'm Michael Stein.