Black Vulture

About the black vulture

The black vulture, also known as the American black vulture, is a New World vulture found from the northeastern United States down through Mexico, Central America, and most of South America, reaching as far as Peru, central Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil, where it's common enough to be seen scavenging in large groups. It's the only living member of its genus, Coragyps, a name built from the Greek words for raven and vulture. Despite the name and superficial resemblance, it isn't closely related to the Eurasian black vulture, an Old World species in a different family that also includes eagles, hawks, and kites.

In appearance, the black vulture is glossy black overall, with a featherless, wrinkled, grayish-black head and neck and a short, hooked beak. Every one of these features serves the scavenger lifestyle: dark feathers show less staining than lighter plumage would, the bare head stays cleaner when digging into a carcass, and the hooked beak is built for stripping meat from bone. The legs are grayish-white, the two front toes are long with small webs at the base, and white patches at the base of the primary feathers show up on the underside of the wing in flight. The nostrils lack an internal septum, so it's possible to see straight through the beak from one side to the other. Adults have brown irises with a single row of eyelashes on the upper lid and two rows on the lower.

Compared to the turkey vulture, whose range overlaps with it across much of the Americas, the black vulture is a less efficient flier: its wings are shorter and provide less lift, so it flaps more often in short bursts between glides rather than soaring for long stretches. It compensates with numbers — black vultures forage in groups, and a flock of them can drive a single turkey vulture, which typically forages alone, off a carcass.

Behavior and diet

Black vultures are gregarious birds that roost in large groups, sometimes alongside turkey vultures on the bare branches of dead trees. Lacking a syrinx, the vocal organ most birds use to sing, they're limited to grunts and hisses, mostly heard when the bird is agitated or feeding. When approached or disturbed, a black vulture will often regurgitate — a defense that also lightens the bird for a faster takeoff. Like other New World vultures, it practices urohidrosis, defecating on its own legs so that evaporation cools its blood vessels, which leaves the legs streaked white with uric acid. It's also commonly seen standing with wings spread, a posture thought to dry the feathers, warm the body, and help kill off bacteria.

Feeding centers on carrion, located by keen eyesight or by following other vultures — particularly members of the genus Cathartes, which hunt partly by smell. Around people, black vultures also scavenge at garbage dumps, and while it's rare, they will take eggs, fish, fruit, dung, and decomposing plant matter, or kill or injure newborn or severely weakened animals such as livestock, deer, or rodents.

Breeding timing shifts with latitude: Florida birds may start as early as January, Ohio birds generally not before March, and in South America the season runs from September in Argentina and Chile to as late as February in Ecuador. Courtship happens on the ground, with several males circling a female, wings partly open, strutting and bobbing their heads; pairs sometimes perform diving or chasing flights near the chosen nest site. Eggs — usually two per clutch — are laid directly on the ground in a wooded area, hollow log, cave, or similar cavity, rarely more than 10 feet up, with little or no nesting material beyond the occasional scrap of colored plastic or metal the birds decorate the site with. Both parents incubate for 28 to 41 days and feed the downy chicks by regurgitation; young stay in the nest for about two months and are flying skillfully by 75 to 80 days old.

Range and habitat

The black vulture's range spans the Nearctic and Neotropic regions, covering the mid-Atlantic states, the southern Midwest and South, Mexico, Central America, and most of South America down to Peru, central Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil; it also turns up as a vagrant in the Caribbean. In the 21st century its range has been expanding farther north into the U.S. Midwest and Northeast. Most populations are year-round residents, though birds at the northern edge of the range may move short distances seasonally.

It favors open country broken up with woods or brush, but also uses moist lowland forest, shrubland, grassland, wetlands and swamps, pastures, and heavily degraded former forest — habitats where it's typically seen soaring overhead or perched on fence posts and dead trees.

Conservation status

The black vulture is listed as Least Concern (LC), reflecting its wide range and generally stable, often abundant populations across the Americas. In the United States it receives legal protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The species plays a practical ecological role by disposing of carrion that would otherwise be left to decompose in the open.