Ground based scavengers will usually find these dead animals first. But once they see a potential meal, they don’t waste any time circling. In those cases, they will circle above wide open places where a dead animal may be easy to spot. If there is no turkey vulture around, the black vultures have to hunt by sight, which is much, much harder for them. Once the turkey vulture sniffs out a corpse and goes down to eat, the much more aggressive black vultures go down after it and chase him away so they can eat first. The bunch of black vultures are kind of in the waiting room, if you see a flock circling. Meanwhile, their cousins, the black vultures, will be several hundred, or more, feet above the turkey vulture, quite often just killing time and circling in one place, keeping an eye on the turkey vulture below who is doing all the actual searching and the work. This turkey vulture will be covering some area, searching with its powerful sense of smell. Chances are, if it’s a bunch of vultures, there will be at least one red-headed turkey vulture at the lowest level, sniffing while it glides, hoping to catch a whiff of a dead animal. It means they have found a nice strong thermal of warm air rising from the Earth, and they, like surfers catching a wave, are riding it high, effortlessly gliding on the powerful updraft of warm air. If you see vultures circling way up high in the sky, nine times out of ten they haven’t found anything yet! They are “just looking”. And they most certainly do not circle above dying things patiently waiting for the dying thing to curse at them and then fall dead so they can go and eat it. Vultures don’t, in fact, circle above dead things. In fact, all of this is so legendary that many people don’t realize that it’s not legendary at all… it’s just a legend! Pure, unadulterated horse puckie. He must be dead already, and he’s right underneath those circling vultures. They see a bunch of vultures circling way off in the distance, and they then know it’s too late. The other scenario is that someone goes out looking for that cowboy. And the patience of vultures is legendary. At some point, the poor guy will look up in the sky, and with one of his last breaths, he will yell out into the sky at the circling vultures, cursing them… “I’m not dead yet! Damn you!” This is accompanied by either a clenched fist, or a middle finger directed at the circling, somber undertakers above him. This is where the vultures gather together upon seeing this and they circle round and round and round, above the desperado below, waiting for him to take his last breath, so they can go in and feast.
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