Few animals have a worse reputation than the vulture. But is it deserved? WithVulture, Katie Fallon offers an irresistible argument to the contrary, tracing a year in the life of a typical North American turkey vulture. Turkey vultures, also known as buzzards, are the most widely distributed and abundant scavenging birds of prey on the planet, found from central Canada to the southern tip of Argentina and nearly everywhere in between. Deftly drawing on the most up-to-date scientific papers and articles and weaving those in with interviews with world-renowned raptor and vulture experts and her own compelling natural history writing, Fallon examines all aspects of the bird’s natural history: breeding, incubating eggs, raising chicks, migrating, and roosting. The result is an intimate portrait of an underappreciated bird—one you’ll never look at in the same way again.
Katie Fallonis co-founder of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, a nonprofit research, education, and rehabilitation center for injured birds. A member of the International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators, she has glove-trained a wide variety of raptor species, including turkey vultures, hawks, owls, and falcons. She is the author, previously, of
Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird. She lives in West Virginia with her family of human and birds.
Introduction: The Spokesbird
1. Vulture Culture
2. The Private Lives of Public Birds
3. Rockshelter
4. Wings and Prayers
5. Rebirth
6. Hill of the Sacred Eagles
7. On the Move
8. Virginia Is for Vultures
9. Battlefield Ghosts
10. Welcome Back
11. Buzzards
Epilogue: Spokesbirds for the Spokesbirds
Afterword: What You Can Do
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
"[A]n excellent quick read, suitable not only for bird lovers and naturalists but for anyone with a bit of natural