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American black vulture

Coragyps atratus

Published on Project Noah
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9.68294, -84.2807

Field Notes

Description:

Black plumage with a featherless gray and cobbled face. With a wingspan up to 1.5 m wide, these large birds were easily visible circling the skies around rural Costa Rica, even from a great distance away.

Habitat:

open areas, ranging from southeastern U.S. to central Chile and Uruguay

Notes:

It landed in this tree with another black vulture, but I couldn't get the two in the same shot. I also learned, from a TV documentary that I watched in the plane on my flight home, that black vultures have a poor sense of smell and hunt almost entirely with their extremely good eyesight. They also eat newly-hatched sea turtles. In human populated areas, black vultures will also scavenge in garbage dumps.

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