Turkey vultures are disgusting.
A few of their more stomach-turning features are featherless heads to help them reach deep into carcasses, pooping onto their own legs and projectile vomiting onto any perceived threat. It’s precisely these adaptations that make turkey vultures — the only species of vulture to live in Washington — so important. These birds serve as nature’s cleaning service, consuming recently dead animal matter that would otherwise be left to fester and spread disease. Turkey vultures should be revered, not reviled.
“They can eat food that would be toxic to just about any other animal. They have extremely strong digestive juices,” said Wilson Cady, founding member, past president and current board member of Vancouver Audubon. “They do a heck of a cleanup job. We’d be knee deep in dead animals if not for turkey vultures.”
Turkey vultures, also called turkey buzzards (though they’re not buzzards) and carrion crows, once hunted for food alongside California condors, Cady said. In fact, California condors were spotted by members of the Lewis and Clark expedition at the mouth of the Columbia River. (“They should have been called ‘Columbia condors,’ ” Cady quipped.)
“When condors were around, they used the turkey vultures to find food. Condors don’t have a sense of smell but turkey vultures can smell the food from a mile away,” Cady said. “A turkey vulture’s beak isn’t strong enough to break open the skin so they relied on the condor to open up the food for them. After the condors ate, the vultures would come in and eat.”