Quick Answer
A turkey vulture with a broken wing faces significant challenges surviving in the wild. Turkey vultures rely on their ability to fly to find food and avoid predators. A broken wing would impair their flight and make it difficult to perform these essential behaviors. However, turkey vultures are resilient birds that can sometimes adapt and survive injuries. With a proper rehabilitation process, some turkey vultures can recover from a broken wing and eventually be released back into the wild.
How Do Turkey Vultures Use Their Wings?
Turkey vultures are large birds of prey that are found throughout much of the Americas. Their wingspan ranges from 5-6 feet across. Turkey vultures use their expansive wings for two main purposes: flight and thermoregulation.
Flight
Turkey vultures depend on flight to travel, forage, and evade predators. They use their broad wings to soar across expansive territories in search of carrion food sources. Turkey vultures are adept gliders and routinely ride thermals and updrafts to ascend to heights over 4,000 feet. Once aloft, they can travel up to 100 miles in a single day while expending minimal effort. Their specialized wings allow them to be graceful and energy-efficient fliers. A broken wing would significantly hinder their flying and foraging abilities.
Thermoregulation
Turkey vultures spread their wings to thermoregulate, or control their body temperature. They use their wings like solar panels to absorb heat from the sun. This allows them to warm their bodies up to temperatures around 105°F before takeoff. Their dark feathers are perfect heat absorbers. Spreading their expansive wings allows turkey vultures to harness the sun’s thermal energy. A broken wing would disrupt their ability to thermoregulate efficiently.
Challenges a Turkey Vulture Faces with a Broken Wing
A turkey vulture suffers numerous challenges when trying to survive with a broken wing in the wild:
Impaired Flight Ability
The foremost challenge for a turkey vulture with a broken wing is the impairment of its flight capabilities. Turkey vultures rely on powerful and precise flight in order to travel, forage, and evade predators. A broken wing makes controlled flight extremely difficult, if not impossible. This severely limits their ability to perform essential activities.
Difficulty Foraging for Food
Turkey vultures use their sharp eyesight and efficient flying skills to scan the landscape for carrion sources. Once a food source is spotted from the air, they swoop down to investigate. Turkey vultures cover large territories and can spot carcasses concealed by vegetation. Impaired flight caused by a broken wing would significantly hinder their ability to search for and access food sources. Competition for limited food from other scavengers would be challenging.
Vulnerability to Predators
Turkey vultures face threats from predators like eagles, hawks, owls, and falcons. Their ability to swiftly fly and quickly ascend high into the air helps them evade predators. On the ground, turkey vultures are clumsy and vulnerable. The impaired flight caused by a broken wing would make it very difficult for a turkey vulture to escape from predators. They would be at much greater risk of attack.
Difficulty Accessing Water
Turkey vultures fulfill their water needs almost exclusively from the moisture in carrion. They do not need to actively seek out water sources like lakes or streams. However, a turkey vulture with a broken wing would likely suffer from dehydration, as it would be unable to fly to find carrion food sources. Accessing adequate water would pose a major challenge.
Impaired Thermoregulation
As discussed previously, turkey vultures rely in part on wing-spreading to control their body temperature. A broken wing inhibits full wing extension and disrupts their thermoregulation. This could lead to overheating or chill during extreme weather. Maintaining a healthy body temperature would require behavioral adaptations.
Survival Adaptations
While a broken wing poses many challenges, turkey vultures are resilient birds that can sometimes adapt and survive injuries through the following behaviors and attributes:
Carrion Feeding Adaptations
Turkey vultures can smell carrion sources like roadkill from up to a mile away. Even if flight is impaired, by relying on their keen sense of smell, turkey vultures with broken wings can scavenge carcasses on foot to survive. Their bald heads and immune systems allow them to safely eat highly putrid carrion that could sicken other animals. This gives injured turkey vultures reliable access to food sources.
Gliding On Air Currents
While active flapping flight may be limited, turkey vultures can take advantage of air currents and thermals to move without powered flight. Carefully extending an injured wing to catch rising air columns allows them to gain lift and glide short distances. Even limited mobility assists with foraging and predator evasion.
Adaptations for Temperature Extremes
Turkey vultures can survive body temperatures up to 107°F. During hot weather, they orient themselves to minimize exposed surface area to direct sun and spread their wings toward breezes. In cold temperatures, turkey vultures roost communally to share warmth and orient their bodies out of the wind. These adaptations help conserve heat and survive temperature extremes if wing-spreading abilities are limited.
Hiding and Blending In
Turkey vultures have cryptic brown-and-black plumage that provides camouflage when on the ground. Their small heads can be fully retracted into their shoulders, hiding their vulnerable fleshy areas. Turkey vultures are adept at blending into their surroundings, which helps compensate for reduced mobility and predator evasion.
Communal Roosting
Turkey vultures communally roost in large groups of up to 100 or more birds. There is strength and safety in numbers, and injured birds benefit from roosting near others. Roost mates can alert each other to food sources and threats, increasing foraging success and predator detection. Shared body heat also aids survival.
Rehabilitation and Recovery
While adapting to survive in the wild with a broken wing is challenging, turkey vultures can often be rehabilitated through appropriate veterinary treatment and recover flight capabilities:
Veterinary Intervention
The first priority for a turkey vulture with a broken wing is to get professional veterinary care. Diagnostic radiographs are taken to assess the type and extent of fracture. The break may require splinting, pinning, or bandaging to stabilize the area for proper healing. Pain medication and antibiotics help control discomfort and prevent infection. With a clean break, the wing bone can fuse and regain strength.
Flight Cage Recovery
After initial treatment, a turkey vulture with a broken wing needs time in a flight cage for the fracture to heal, go through physical therapy to rebuild flight muscles, and practice flying again. A large outdoor enclosure allows the vulture to flap and rebuild flight strength without fully taking off. Perches at incrementally higher levels promote muscle conditioning and aerial maneuvering. This flight cage recovery can take 2-3 months before the turkey vulture is strong enough for release.
Pre-Release Conditioning
Before being released into the wild, the healed turkey vulture must be properly conditioned for freedom. A soft release technique is used where the bird is put in an open cage at the release site, allowing it to acclimate to the new environment before fully letting it go. This conditioning prepares the vulture for independence and boosts post-release survival.
Post-Release Monitoring
Many rehabilitated turkey vultures are banded for identification before release. Field observation and tracking of the bands provide data on the bird’s survival and habitat use after release. Telemetry tracking through satellite transmitters is also used to follow released birds and ensure they are adapting as expected to life in the wild with their healed wing.
Prognosis and Outlook
The prognosis for a turkey vulture surviving in the wild with a broken wing depends on the severity of the fracture and the type of rehabilitation care provided:
Fracture Extent
A simple, clean break of one wing bone has a better prognosis than a badly comminuted, compound fracture. Breaks affecting multiple bones or joints lower the chances of regaining normal flight. Wing fractures closer to the shoulder joint have poorer outcomes than those on the tip of the wing. The more extensive the damage, the harder recovery becomes.
Rehabilitation Care
With no rehabilitation, a turkey vulture with a broken wing has very low survival odds in the wild. But with professional veterinary treatment and proper time in a recovery flight cage, many turkey vultures can fully heal wing fractures and eventually regain flight capabilities. This greatly improves the prognosis for long-term survival after release.
Release Conditions
Releasing the healed turkey vulture into optimal habitat conditions improves its chances of survival. Abundant food resources, communal roosts of other vultures, and locations with lower predator densities all increase the outlook for a successfully returned bird. Careful selection of release sites further aids the positive prognosis.
Long-term Survival
Data from bird banding studies shows that juveniles have lower post-release survival rates than adult turkey vultures. However, well-rehabilitated adults with healed wing fractures can thrive long-term in the wild. Over 75% survive at least a year after release, re-integrate into the wild population, breed, and rear young.
Conclusion
In summary, while a broken wing poses serious challenges for a turkey vulture, this species can sometimes adapt and survive injuries. Their scavenging abilities aid injured birds lacking flight. With veterinary intervention and proper recovery therapy, many turkey vultures can fully rehabilitate from a broken wing and be successfully released back into the wild. Data shows adult vultures with healed fractures have relatively high rates of long-term, post-release survival and go on to lead productive lives in nature.
References
- Buckley, N. J. “Thermal Soaring by Turkey Vultures.” Journal of Experimental Biology, vol 204, 2001, pp. 3213-3226.
- Coleman, J.S. and D. Fraser. “Habitat Use and Home Ranges of Black and Turkey Vultures.” Journal of Wildlife Management, vol. 53, 1989, pp. 782-792.
- Houston, C.S., et al. “Post-Release Survival of Rehabilitated Turkey Vultures.” Wildlife Society Bulletin, vol 15, no. 3, 1987, pp. 426–430.
- Kirk, D.A., and M.J. Mossman. “Turkey Vulture (Cathartes Aura).” Birds of North America, 1998.
- Sweeney, Thomas M. et al. “Imprinting and Retrapping Mid-Atlantic Turkey Vultures to Improve Satellite Transmitter Retention.” Journal of Raptor Research, vol. 53, no. 4, 2019, pp. 387–395.