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Black Vulture | Coragyps atratus
Zwarte gier | Zopilote Negro
The Black Vulture is the stocky, short-tailed scavenger that hangs over roads, pastures and town edges across the southern half of North America. It is entirely black apart from two white 'stars' near the wingtips, and its sense of smell is poor: it finds carcasses by watching other vultures.
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Voice
Like the other New World vultures the Black Vulture has no syrinx and therefore no voice in the ordinary sense: no song and no call. What is left are air sounds — a sharp open-billed hiss at a carcass or on the roost, and a low, short grunting while feeding and in disputes over a place. At a communal roost in the early morning, dozens of birds together produce a soft rustling and hissing. Otherwise it is silent, in flight as well.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Reserva do Setor Sítio de Recreio Caraíbas-Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil · xeno-canto
Identification
Sooty black throughout, with a bare, wrinkled grey-black head and a short, pale horn-coloured bill tip. Under the wing a white panel at the base of the primaries lights up as a star in flight, but is often not visible against a bright sky. The tail is short and square-cut and barely projects behind the wings, so the silhouette looks almost tailless. The sexes are alike; juveniles differ only in a smoother, slightly darker head. Flight is a few quick stiff wingbeats followed by a short glide, wings held flat and angled a little forward.
Confusion species
Turkey Vulture is slimmer and longer-tailed, holds its wings in a V and rocks visibly in a thermal; its whole trailing edge is silver-grey, where the Black Vulture has white only at the wingtip, and its head is red. Juvenile Turkey Vultures have a grey head and are regularly called Black Vultures for that reason; check the long tail and the wing attitude instead. At distance a group of Black Vultures can suggest crows, but those flap continuously and hardly glide. California Condor is many times larger, with its white panel along the leading edge rather than at the tip.
Habitat
Half-open country with scattered woodland: pasture and ranch land, arable fields, roadsides, landfills, abattoirs and the edges of towns and cities. It roosts communally in tall bare or dead trees, often near water and sometimes hundreds together; it breeds on the ground in a cave, a hollow log, dense scrub or a derelict building, and builds no nest at all. In the tropics it uses the open parts of lowland rainforest and lives in the largest cities. Unbroken closed forest and high mountains are avoided.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by the USNVC — the vegetation classification of the United States and Canada — and CMECS for sea and coast.
Range and movements
Resident across the southern and southeastern United States, throughout Middle America and on south to central Chile and Argentina, beyond the edge of this map. Around 1900 the northern limit still lay in Virginia and Tennessee; since then the species has spread through Pennsylvania and New Jersey into New York and southern New England, and west into Kansas and southern Arizona. More road-killed animals, more livestock and milder winters are the reasons usually given. In the West Indies it occurs only as a vagrant; birds at the northern edge move partly south for the winter.
- Resident
- Winter
- Passage
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
Look up over a highway or a pasture in the middle of the day: the Black Vulture takes to the air later than the Turkey Vulture because it needs stronger thermals, and then often circles higher, in small groups. Separate the two on two features at once, the short tail and the stiff, short wingbeats; the white stars are unreliable against the light. For close views, find a communal roost tree near water towards sunset.
Conservation
Least Concern (LC), with a world population estimated near 190 million birds and an increase of about 3.4 per cent a year between 1966 and 2019. Persecution in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the bird was thought to spread disease, has ended; in the United States it has been protected by law since 1972. Conflict with stock farmers is real: Black Vultures attack newborn calves, lambs and piglets in groups, and permits to shoot them are issued each year for that reason. Lead fragments in carcasses and swallowed litter are local threats.
Scientific name
Coragyps atratus | (Bechstein, 1793)
Johann Matthäus Bechstein described the species in 1793 as Vultur atratus, among the Old World vultures; because it was later moved to another genus, author and year stand in parentheses. The genus Coragyps was introduced by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1853 and is a contraction of Greek korax, 'raven', and gyps, 'vulture': the raven-vulture. atratus is Latin for 'clothed in black', from ater, 'dull black', the word used of Roman mourning dress. The specimen described came from the St. Johns River in Florida.