Sat down to enjoy my biscuits and gravy breakfast and something caught my eye. I saw movement up and behind our big wood shed. I had recently dumped a large container of sliced cow femur bones there for the outdoor cats to chew on the remaining tissue and marrow.

As I looked more closely I thought it was a few ravens that had found the dump pile. So I got my binos and looked at them better, then I could see what I was looking at for sure.

A few of those black vultures had found the pile and were working the bones over for any left over scraps. The birds were fighting amongst themselves it appeared as to who got to get the morsels first.

All their carrying on and squawking caught the attention of a few of our sleeping barn cats. Sure enough, I caught on camera where 2 of our tomcats began stalking the vultures. I didn't think they would try to attack them but I was wrong. I just got a brief moment to snap a couple photos of the stalk and the eventual run at the birds.

They flew up and landed just a short distance away and began making their way back to the bait pile once again.













Just goes to show you how fast things can evolve in nature if you aren't paying attention to things.


The birds flew just a moment after the last photo was taken. However, they came back once again.

Obviously they were not discouraged by the threat of the barn cats.

Beat it, Buzzards!

Your cats are braver than mine Bob. Mine don't mess with large birds, they coexist with the chickens. They even let the chickens eat out of their cat food feeder. Too many hard pecks to the head taught them a lesson I guess. LOL

Would have never figured buzzards so far north in winter. Thought they all migrated to south Texas.lol

aren't they invasive? thought invasives were not protected?

Black vultures are a native specie.

So what happened to the red heads? who are they different in actions and such? Never saw black heads until 25 years ago, am I wrong here?.....jk

This is the first time ever for me to see black heads around here, and in the winter to boot. We have lots of red headed vultures locally, mostly due to the odor foot print that we have do to our business. They are only here in the warmer months.

I might be mistaken but I think the ones with red heads are turkey vultures and the others are black buzzards..which is a smaller species and also more aggressive. Some states have an open season on them now. For example, Louisiana issues permits for them. We're allowed 5 per year if I'm not mistaken. It's something new so I don't know how of the details.

There were a couple of turkey vultures feeding on a roadkill possum the other day. I heard once that blacks have better smelling than turkey vultures. Often times turkeys will follow the blacks around and since the turkeys are bigger they will run the black vultures off and feed.

As Swampghost said, we call red headed ones Turkey buzzards (I know they are actually vultures)

The black headed ones we call Mexican buzzards

Lots of ranchers shoot the black headed ones as they will attack new born calves (and kill them) and will start in on a downed cow and have heard of them attacking cows while they are calving.

There are 100's around the area and they are usually on something PDQ when it dies

Saw them for the first time this year here in Ohio. I turned the truck around and was like wth and got some pics. I had to google them. These ones are known to be nuisance. Like eating / pecking new born calves or something. I was surprised they were protected but they are. Its not every day you are driving around your home 20 and see a new critter.

Scout 1 ,, I read up on them a few years ago when they first popped up around here. The blacks more or less sight feed and will chase the turkey buzzards off of what they find. We have them both around here and the turkey buzzards always find my carcass piles first. A turkey buzzard will find a dead squirrel buried in leaves. That's how good there nose is. Neither one will leave here unless it gets real cold and deeper snow. Oh yea, the blacks don't wait for something to die.

We've had the turkey buzzards here for about 10 years now, and you can find them all winter, never had them before...I expect the buzzards will show eventually.
Saw them in the hundreds roosting on electric towers around Fort Worth...

I know a guy who had a week old red ford f150 pickup. Went to the boat ramp, launched boat, and went fishing. When he got back to the ramp, there were a bunch of black vultures walking around on his new truck. They scratched the heck out of the paint and pulled out the rubber gaskets around the windows. Folks would clean fish and throw out the carcasses - attracting the vultures.