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Where We Left Off:
We got to open a case file on local coyotes, Armando and Cookie (and possibly others).
Minority Report:
We were fortunate that this year on the 8th Adoptiversary of Burton Guster Nabu coming to our household, the weather was nice enough to have a couple hours outside looking for adventure. Gus had a unique encounter with a beast he’s never been close to before—a turkey vulture!
I served Gus a fine, fancy breakfast of his special food topped with a sprinkling of catnip and freeze-dried chicken surrounded by some Temptations treats. Afterward, he was ready to get outside. Gus was enjoying his usual kind of bird watching at the corner of the Moretti rock fortress. He loves to sit behind the sundial in the shadow where he can lurk. Chipmunks, birds, and moles go to the brick above Gus to grab their snacks. He was having a fantastic “birthday” doing his favorite things: eating and playing outside. For a while, Ollie was outside too. His butler took him a neighborhood patrol.
Then something unexpected happened.
A turkey vulture landed in the yard! We’re used to seeing them just about every day as they circle in they sky. We’re familiar with them, but we are not used to having them land so close to us. I managed to take a lot of photos (of course, they are not great photos) as the entire scene played out before me.
Gus stood and watched for a minute or two from the sundial area. The vulture looked at us and made some interesting sounds. I honestly didn’t know if they made sounds. It was not as aggressive as a goose hiss, but it was weird. In fact, it sounds a lot like when humans are teetering on exhaustion and audibly exhale hard. That sound nor the size of the bird deterred Gus from investigating this situation. He went head first into a potential battle.
I was later criticized for not following Gus to protect him and instead chose to take photos. I was watching closely. I would know if he was in danger. And quite frankly, vultures around here aren’t the attacking kind of beasts you see in behavior from other large birds like owls and hawks. They eat the dead. They’re important to the ecosystem. They’re rather peaceful even in a large wake of them. Gus was fine.
In fact, I was quite proud of Gus for being brave. He chose to approach the enormous bird and hiss at it. Gus is not always this brave. The hissing did surprise me since the bird was clearly no threat. However, it wanted Gus to think it was a threat and spread open its wings while it rotated around on the compost cage. Gus was fierce and tried to get the perceived enemy to leave immediately.
The vulture hopped up to a higher perch in a tree. Gus circled around while thinking up a plan of attack. He tried climbing up the tree at the other side of the cage in hopes of finding a sturdy branch that would bring him closer to the target. No such luck. As he climbed up, the vulture took off for a roof nearby, its wings making a whoooosh whoooosh sound slowly with each flap.
Motive: Why Did the Vulture Visit?
As stated, we’ve seen vultures around carrion before and could get within a certain distance to get photos with a decent 300mm lens, but having one land when there was no carcass in sight, was a unique moment. We got clarification the next day.
The day after this experience, Gus and I discovered a dead body under the trees where the vulture had been. Had it been there and I missed something so obvious? I don’t think so because the body was a red squirrel with a stark white belly side. That’s what caught my eye the next day as I looked out a window on the second floor.
Victim and Cause of Death:
Gus and I approached the squirrel’s body. I took photos before turning the body around and flipping it over for a more thorough look. Based on the condition of the body, we believe it was run over by a car. To be honest, it might have been many cars since this is a busy road.
There are several types of birds that would have found interest in a corpse this size: owls, hawks, crows, ravens, and of course, vultures. It was certainly not enough for multiple vultures to share.
Theory:
I took the photos up to Oliver. He’s honestly been having a hard time getting over a fight with Gus that was caused by seeing an intruder (Lokai, the black and white cat). Ollie has clearly wanted to go outside and on the balcony, but he’s too stressed. I brought the photos to him and we reviewed them together while he had office hours.
Ollie believes a bird smaller than a vulture tried to retrieve the squirrel’s body from the road, but had to drop it because of traffic. That is the most logical explanation for how the squirrel ended up moving from the road to the spot under the trees next to the compost cage.
The vulture was most likely at that edge of the property while trying to find the source of the scent that would provide a meal. This species of vulture, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura), has more than its sight to find meals. Back in the 1960s, “Kenneth Stager, a senior curator of ornithology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, made a breakthrough. Anatomical studies he conducted showed that turkey vultures had an extremely large olfactory bulb—an area of the brain responsible for processing odors,” per a 2017 article with Smithsonian Magazine.
That olfactory bulb is significantly larger than those of black vultures and also relative to the size of their brains. The vulture’s sense of smell is probably what led it to the space where it landed and was later the space where the squirrel was found.
How did the vulture know the squirrel was going to be dropped in that spot before it happened?
I’ve done my best to paint an accurate series of events over those two days.
- The vulture landed on the ground inside the property line several feet from the compost cage.
- Gus spotted the vulture and approached it for questioning.
- The vulture felt threatened by Gus and flew to a roof out of reach.
- The next day, someone moved the body from the road to the spot where the vulture landed the day before.
- Cause of death of the squirrel was determined as a vehicle accident.
Does the vulture possess a kind of ESP, extra sensory perception, other than keen olfactory and visual senses?
We had a team meeting and discussed the possibility that turkey vultures have a definitive sixth sense. All of us agreed on it.
Case Findings:
When a turkey vulture paid a visit to the Winchester-Nabu estate, it wasn’t a simple social call. We investigated the reasons why that vulture wanted to be precisely where it landed and that led to a mind-blowing discovery. Turkey vultures—at least this one—had precognition to know that a nearby carcass of a red squirrel would be at that exact spot within 24 hours. This new information about what turkey vultures are capable of took all of us by surprise and could be a revolutionary piece of knowledge in ornithology.
With this new information, the Winchester-Nabu detectives are wondering if the precognition of turkey vultures could be put to beneficial use with helping the environment and with solving crimes.
Case Status: Closed
Resources:
Ault, A. (2017) Turkey vultures have a keen sense of smell and now we know why, Smithsonian.com. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/turkey-vultures-have-keen-sense-smell-and-now-we-know-why-180967599/ (Accessed: 27 March 2024).