We always have these huge black birds - easily two or three times the size of a crow with huge beaks - in our yard and in the surrounding area.
My mom always calls them Turkey Buzzards, but I looked up a picture of one, and real turkey buzzards have red faces - these are entirely black.
So, I’ve assumed that they are ravens, but there are two problems with this-
we don’t appear to have ravens in new jersey; and
the description of ravens include a “wedge-shaped tail” - I can’t say for sure that these don’t have a wedge-shaped tail, but the tails of the birds i see are much shorter than they appear in all the pictures I’ve seen.
The bird also will occasionally circle around in groups like cartoon vultures.
Like I said, I live in New Jersey.
Anyone have any idea what these things are?
Yeah, I did rush. I meant that they are pretty much the same, same family and all, with ravens getting somewhat larger. But not as large as the OP specifies. They would be kinda hard to tell apart. Both live in the western US.
If they’ve got fairly obvious white tips on their wings when they’re flying, they’re Black Vultures. The other easy way to tell the difference between Turkey Vultures and Black Vultures is that Turkey Vultures, when they fly, usually have their wings in a shallow “V” shape (i.e., tips higher than body).
Turkey buzzards - nature’s cleanup crew. Since New Jersey’s deer population exploded, the number of deer/car accidents increased dramatically. Thus, the buzzards have been thriving. The road crews don’t even bother picking up the carcasses anymore. The buzzards handle the…um…disposal quite efficiently.
Those big birds are looking for carrion. Sure you don’t have anything dead in your yard??
I’d say around 18-20" tall sounds right (though the one I saw today in a tree was kind of…slouching), so they very possibly could just be huge crows, however, I got a good look at one today, and noticed two things that make me think it isn’t a crow. It had a very short tail - kind of like the black vulture in this picture, and a thicker beak than I’d expect from a crow.
I think it’s also very possible that at least some of the birds ARE black vultures, but this one today wasn’t. It had a longish, straight, thick beak and was completely solid black. I’m pretty sure it had feathers on the head also.
So, I guess I’ll come to the conclusion that there are a mixture of black vultures, and really, really big crows who for some reason have almost no tails (?).
I’m going to try to find out if there’s a local…bird place or someone who would know better than I do, and give them a call tomorrow.
(For the record, there is certainly dead stuff around my house, with the way my dogs like to kill squirrels and such, and there is also a butcher down the street who I imagine disposes of scraps somehow.)
On second thought - those things have got to be black vultures. The first few pictures I looked at made the white on the wings look slightly visible when they were just perched, and the heads looked really light, but the more pictures I look at, the more I think that even from the pretty close distance I was at, the head could have looked completely black.
I’ve also seen several pictures of them sitting and looking “hunched”, which is the exact weird position I saw my bird sitting in.
I’m pretty sure the case is closed. Thanks again! I can know rest easy knowing that the huge black birds that circle my yard are nothing but common vultures :eek:
The vultures where I was raised (Central California) were far too timid to roost in someone’s back yard. Crows and/or ravens didn’t have that problem, though.
