The summer resident turkey vultures have begun their return to Medicine Hat from their wintering spots in Central and South America.--PHOTO COURTESY CHRIS FISHER
They might get a bad rap but the return of turkey vultures to Medicine Hat in the past week is as sure a sign spring has sprung in southeastern Alberta as just about anything else.
And as one of the largest birds found in the province, they are hard to miss as they glide over the city’s downtown around their usual roosting perch on the top of the Telus building.
Chris Fisher, author of Birds of Alberta, says the giant bird with its nearly two-metre wingspan, has managed to escape the celebrity status among the birding community in other locations in North, Central and South America.
“In Alberta, turkey vultures remain kind of a special occurrence,” said Fisher, highlighting they are only usually found along the eastern border of the province between the Cypress Hills and Cold Lake. “And Medicine Hat might be the best place in all of the province to see them.”
The annual migration for the bird in itself is amazing, he said, noting the vultures travel from as far as their usual wintering spots in South and Central America to the city each summer.
Fisher admits the birds might not be the most aesthetically pleasing with their, “ugly red faces,” but there is a good reason the featherless noggin of the vulture is such as it is.
“Vultures are scavengers – they smell extraordinarily well, they can smell rotting flesh from a great distance away – but if you spend your time sticking your head in the rotting belly of a pronghorn or mule deer in these parts, you don’t want the feathers covered so the ickiness starts festering,” he said.
But Fisher says vultures have a bad reputation in Western culture because of the bird’s connection with death – whether it be animal or human.
“It really shouldn’t,” said Fisher. “Ecologically, they aren’t out there killing anything and if anything, they kind of are cleaning up the landscape.”
The bird is also rare enough in Alberta to avoid being ladled as any kind of pest.
And in many ways vultures, which can live for up to 20 years, are one of the more intelligent and adaptive birds out there, Fisher added.
The most noticeable feature of the vultures is how long they can stay flying.
“They expend hardly any energy at all. They are not big flappers. They’ll flap early in the morning to get off those roost sites but then they can soar for hours and hours and expend very little energy while covering tens of tens of kilometres.”
Marty Drut, interpreter at Police Point Park, says along with the vultures, the other traditional birds of spring in the region – herons and pelicans – have been sighted along the South Saskatchewan River.
