As the lone cowboy puts on his old worn out spurs, he gazes off into wide open prairie, nervous and a little afraid. The cowboy takes a chance and heads east looking for his lost friend. Many miles into this vast journey he spots a dozen or so vultures flying high above, and they are circling. The cowboy now knows that his buddy is either dying or is already dead. As the cowboy rides up underneath the vultures, he finds his buddy barely hanging on to life. From John Wayne to Clint Eastwood, vultures have been making cameos in all most every western that has graced the big screen. The symbolic picture of a vulture or vultures circling high above has always been a sign that death was nearby or had already come. If someone was to ask what the
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These birds are vultures and they seem to glide without much effort around and around for what seems like forever. Vultures are large birds that can weight up to thirty-three pounds and have a wingspan of nearly ten feet. The massive size of a vulture gives it some advantages and some disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage of being so big is that vultures cannot take flight at a high rate of speed. In fact, many vultures die yearly due to vehicle collisions because after gorging on dead animals they are extremely slow to take flight. The advantage of vultures being so big is that they are exceptional at soaring. Vultures have been known to soar up to two-hundred miles in one day and as high as thirty-seven thousand feet above sea level. How they soar so far and so high is through warm updrafts called ‘thermals’. Thermals are caused when patches of ground are warmer than those beside it. A mountain may block the sun from reaching a certain part of a valley, yet the other side may have full sun. The ground being blasted by the heat of the sun will give off warmth and since heat rises, the air from that spot would stretch up through the sky. Their wings, being so broad and long, make soaring easier for these oversized birds. Vultures will commonly fly around until they find one of these thermals. Once found, vultures will soar with little to no effort, circling for hours just to stay in the thermals that are created from the heat being released from the
These birds are vultures and they seem to glide without much effort around and around for what seems like forever. Vultures are large birds that can weight up to thirty-three pounds and have a wingspan of nearly ten feet. The massive size of a vulture gives it some advantages and some disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage of being so big is that vultures cannot take flight at a high rate of speed. In fact, many vultures die yearly due to vehicle collisions because after gorging on dead animals they are extremely slow to take flight. The advantage of vultures being so big is that they are exceptional at soaring. Vultures have been known to soar up to two-hundred miles in one day and as high as thirty-seven thousand feet above sea level. How they soar so far and so high is through warm updrafts called ‘thermals’. Thermals are caused when patches of ground are warmer than those beside it. A mountain may block the sun from reaching a certain part of a valley, yet the other side may have full sun. The ground being blasted by the heat of the sun will give off warmth and since heat rises, the air from that spot would stretch up through the sky. Their wings, being so broad and long, make soaring easier for these oversized birds. Vultures will commonly fly around until they find one of these thermals. Once found, vultures will soar with little to no effort, circling for hours just to stay in the thermals that are created from the heat being released from the