Re: Humans as scavengers


"pete" <vincent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eo9h4p$l1j$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
on Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:25:22 -0500, Jois <firstjois@xxxxxxxxxxx> sez:

Your post reminded me to check on the differences between Turkey Vultures
(in the US) and Buzzards

http://vulturesociety.homestead.com/

http://www.desertusa.com/magdec97/dec_pap/du_tkvulture.html
"Unlike most birds, vultures have a keen sense of smell. The Turkey
Vulture's olfactory sense is estimated to be 3 times that of the smaller
Black Vulture, which is also found in the North American Deserts. The
California Condor, now almost extinct, is the third member of the
Cathartidae Family, referred to as the American Vultures. Vultures are
sometimes mistakenly called buzzards, the British name for buteos -- hawks
of the Buteo genus."


If you have lived in Western USA you might have grown up using "buzzard"
as
the general term for all of these birds. I did and I have to remind
myself
to separate them in general use.

All of them? In my part of the woods, buzzard seems too have devolved
to a sort of uneducated (sometimes deliberately, as an emphasis of
proletarian origin - you know, part of reverse snobbery) term
reserved exclusively for vultures; in fact often heard in the
term "turkey buzzard", (or in "buzzards are circling").

Note also that the prime north american archetype for buteos is
the red-tailed hawk, a brawny, broad winged, bushy-feathered bird
quite at the other pole among raptors from the turkey vulture.

Pete, as a kid in Texas or California, if something was up there circling it
was a buzzard. "Turkey buzzard" doesn't sound quite right, probably didn't
hear it very often and I only found out about hawks when I started to see
them picking song birds of bird feeders in the back yard in Virginia. I
think I've seen red-tailed hawks on telephone wires.

Location, location, location

Jois


.

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