Birds Of A Feather: San Miguel De Allende's Black Birds

By Bob Graham

In past articles I have mostly written about the white bird species that we see around San Miguel. They tell me that the colour white is produced by combining all the colours of the spectrum. 

The opposite of that is black, a hue created when you take away all those elemental colours.  With that in mind, what I propose to look at next is some of San Miguel de Allende's Black Birds. 

To that end, I think we should start with two of the largest black birds of our area, the Vultures.   There are two species of vultures that we see here. The most common of them in the skies of San Miguel are the Turkey Vultures. Slightly less common are the Black Vultures.  At first glance, as they soar overhead, they may seem hard to tell apart.  They both are mostly black but there are a number of distinguishing differences. Both Turkey and Black Vulture  heads are featherless, a necessity when feeding on decaying flesh. Black Vulture heads are black. Turkey Vulture heads are small and red but this colour is sometimes hard to see at a distance.

As well, juvenile Turkey Vulture heads are grayish so this colour difference may not be as distinguishing a feature as the reader may think.  Despite this, there are a number of other characteristic that can help us tell them apart. Firstly, the trailing edge of the wings of Turkey Vultures is white from the tip of the wing to the body and their tails are long and rounded.  As well, in flight they hold their wings in a slight “V” (dihedral) shape and once airborne they soar for long periods without flapping.   

In contrast, only the wing tips of Black Vultures are white and their square tails are so short that their toes hang over the end.  Also they hold their wings flat and soaring is often interrupted by periods of flapping. Another difference between the two species is how they find their food.  Both are exclusively carrion eaters which Black Vultures find by sight. On the other hand, Turkey Vultures find carcases by their keen sense of smell.  How well developed is this sense of smell was once illustrated to me when I noticed one dipping low over a field.

Curious about what was attracting it to fly so low, I walked out into the field and when I got to the area it seemed to be lowest I could smell a very, faint scent of decaying flesh.  However I could not see the source and if I walked a short way away from there, I lost the odor.  Finally, curiosity getting the best of me, I bent down and parted the grass in the area where the smell was the strongest and found the skeletal remains of a snake.  What amazed me was that I basically had to stand on top of these remains to get the odor while this bird, flying by, at God knows what height, had picked up on it.

The final bird I am highlighting is the Crested Caracara.  Why I am including it in this group may confuse the reader.  As my photo shows it is only partially black. Nor does it even belong to the vulture family.

It is instead, a member of one of the two subspecies of Falcons!  Its commonality to the vultures then, is not colour or family, but rather, its preference to feed on carrion over other food choices. Which, similar to Black Vultures, they find by sight. Interestingly, Crested Caracara are sometimes called Mexican Eagles.

This name comes from the speculation, by some, that the bird Aztecs saw perched on a Prickly Pear Cactus holding a snake in its talons was not a Golden Eagle, (which are rare that far south) but rather a Crested Caracara.  Whatever species is correct, that sighting is what led the Aztecs to found their capital city, Tenochtitlan there and in turn led the Spanish to center Mexico City in that same location. Of course, in the end Golden Eagles have won out, as they both emblazon the Mexican flag and are the national animal of Mexico.       

The best way to see any of these interesting birds in the San Miguel area is either to get somewhere away from the hustle and bustle of the city with a view of the sky and look for them riding a thermal or, perhaps a little less appealing, finding a road kill.