Urban Nature Austin

[urbpan]

One of the things I loved about Austin when we visited four years ago was the almost constant presence of black vultures and turkey vultures. LJ friend by_steph recently got a series of photos of a family of black vultures making use of a roadkill squirrel. See them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30924065@N00/sets/72157625106490987/

Comments

[featheredfrog.livejournal.com]

You don't have to go that far: there's a thriving population of both turkey and black vultures in the Hudson River Valley...

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Vultures are a major professional irritation. In the past year, we have had at least six or seven pig carcasses filched from our research sites. not just fed on in situ, but the corpse is actually removed. In order to get to one of our research pigs, the birds have to lift a 3x3 steel cage, then pick up a 30-50 pound hog carcass and make off with it.

More often than not, we don't even find bones.