Vulture culture: Naming contest for baby vultures announced
During the height of winter, two black-feathered, semi-yearly residents made their way back to their familiar haunt, a secluded corner of a courtyard on the Long Campus at UT Health San Antonio.
There, on the second floor across from the Dental Hygiene Office, the mother laid two whitish eggs and has dutifully taken turns with her mate to incubate the precious bundles to ensure their safety and viability.
“Since they are cooperative breeders, and they take turns, it would be very hard to be a single parent if you were a black vulture,” said Patsy Inglet, education and community engagement chair, Bexar Audubon South Central Texas, a chapter affiliate of the National Audubon Society. As one parent is incubating, the other finds food to bring back to their mate, Inglet added.
The eggs — which typically take about 38 days to incubate, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology — will likely hatch within the next few weeks. Once they hatch, the nesting period will last 70–98 days, according to the Cornell Lab.
Last year, the babies hatched in April, drawing many onlookers to the courtyard windows to get a firsthand view of the parents rearing their latest brood.
Contest to name our baby vultures
Visiting the vulture family has become a tradition for many members of the university community.
In fact, some created an informal vulture club whose members visited the vulture family in past years and provided them interesting backstories and fun names.
In this spirit, a contest will get underway shortly to name the two baby vultures that will soon be welcomed into the world.
Look for a future announcement in This Week showing the new hatchlings and asking for your creative names for the baby birds. The top names will be identified in This Week for a final vote to determine the two winning names. The winner will have their name included in this newsletter and receive a lunch for two at the Panorama Buffet, a fine-dining experience at the Long Campus Academic Learning and Teaching Center (ALTC) with panoramic views of the campus and beyond. In the meantime, what have you chosen to name the vulture parents? If you have named the vulture parents in past years, let us know those names and how they came about by sending an email to communications@uthscsa.edu.
Devoted to each other and their offspring
As monogamous birds, black vultures are devoted to their mates and their offspring, whom they feed for up to eight months after fledging, or developing their feathers, according to Cornell Lab.
Formerly on the protected species list, the black vultures have been on campus since 2020, said Jeffrey Patterson, MBA, executive director, Facilities Management and Operations. “Although we could relocate them, in Facilities Management, we’ve jokingly referred to them as the unofficial mascots of UT Health San Antonio. They’ve been returning for so long and bring so many people around campus happiness, we’ve elected to leave them alone for the time being.”
Since 2020, the loving vulture couple has raised an estimated 10 nestlings in the quiet universe they’ve carved out for themselves.
“[Black vultures are] great parents,” said Josef San Miguel, director of aviculture at the San Antonio Zoo. San Miguel should know. Black vultures are plentiful at the zoo, where he’s seen their devotion firsthand.
“[The nestlings are] very dependent, but it builds a very strong family group,” he said.
As omnivores, black vultures frequently dine on carrion, or animal carcasses, such as feral hogs, poultry, cattle, donkeys, raccoons, coyotes, opossums, striped skunks and armadillos. They will also catch small fish in shallow water or feed on floating carrion, according to the Cornell Lab.
“They can eat things that would kill other organisms,” Inglet said. “They have a very strong acid in their stomach. They can survive anthrax and botulism and other bacterial diseases that would kill other creatures.”
“Anything they ingest is going to turn into liquid, and so they regurgitate to the baby,” San Miguel said, adding that meat is their primary food of choice.
“They eat just about anything,” San Miguel said, adding that they even like popcorn and hot dogs.
San Antonio: A sought-out destination for black vultures
Black vultures are bountiful in San Antonio, likely because of the city’s moderate temperatures.
In fact, they live at the zoo throughout the year, San Miguel said.
“They love our giraffe area,” he said. “There’s a beautiful area — I call it Club Med — and they just love hanging around. They bathe all day. I mean, it’s just like a resort for them. There’s food, the sun and that beautiful pool out there [that] the giraffes share.”
They especially seem to enjoy the springtime, San Miguel said.
While it’s hard to determine if they migrate from San Antonio during the later part of the year, San Miguel said some seem to migrate further south, toward the coast.
Where’s the respect?
As members of the Cathartidae family, a group of seven species of New World vultures found in the Americas, black vultures are estimated to number in the millions, according to the Hawk Mountain Global Raptor Conservation.
Their role as nature’s cleanup crew is especially vital for the ecosystem.
“They’re kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of the bird world,” Inglet said. “They don’t get enough respect for what they do. They help clean up the environment of carcasses. We’d be knee-deep in dead things if the vultures were not active. The faster you take a carcass off the landscape, the less chance [diseases] spread.”
Despite some misconceptions, black vultures are quiet and go about the business of keeping the ecosystem clean.
“They don’t make a lot of noise,” San Miguel said. “They do play and you can see them enjoying themselves out here at our zoo at any given time. They don’t go after people for any reason. They’re just here doing a service and doing their thing every day.”
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