April 8, 2019

Location: Fellsmere, St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park

I am a Black Vulture
Eating a large dead fish.
I find fresh flowers on the table
Makes the dead fish smell extra delish'

Note: Last week I held a contest, Guess whose wing? The winners were Joy Handley (Facebook) and Rochelle Hood (email subscriber). I had one person guess Black Vulture, and here is my explanation about how it can be tricky to identify the difference in their wings:

This is a little tricky - when you see vultures fly, you only see them from underneath. From that vantage point, it is easy to see that black vultures have black wings, but wear white gloves, but turkey vultures have white from their finger tips to their arm pit. On the ground though, you will notice that the white on the black vulture is on both the top and bottom of the wing, but on the Turkey Vulture, the white is only on the underside of the wing. Notice in the 2 pictures below - in the first one, the Turkey Vulture is facing us, so you see the whitish underside of the wing. But in the second picture, he has his back to us, so you hardly see the white.

Photo and text © 2018 Dee Fairbanks Simpson