Can anybody help identify this raptor?

[rumbleBee_STi]

I second (or is it third?) the opinion that's a vulture, which will only eat dead, nasty-smelling things. Turkey vulture undersides have a distinct two-tone pattern.

That makes sense, because there was a dead animal somewhere in the woods next to our driveway that was smelling pretty rank! I guess he/she was trying to find it.

 

[Blkat]

That makes sense, because there was a dead animal somewhere in the woods next to our driveway that was smelling pretty rank! I guess he/she was trying to find it.

Turkey vultures are pretty cool in that, unlike hawks, falcons and eagles, they seek their food solely by smell. They can detect a few scent molecules from hundreds of feet in their air due to an extremely large olfactory bulb in their brain and can pinpoint it with laser-like accuracy. (They have twice as many mitral cells as black vultures, which hunt using visual cues like other raptors.)

They never bother with anything living and do us all a great service in terms of sanitation. From spring through fall, I've never seen anything dead last more than a few days before vultures have all but disappeared it.

In a grim but vaguely funny aside, I've driven through town and seen vultures hanging out in a big tree in front of a funeral home. Ha, ha. Very Addams' Family. Then I read that it's a bit of old rural folklore to see that and, based on modern science, it is because those big gangly birds do in fact smell death. Like I said, all they need are a few molecules.

But they are benign to the living, including all of our chickens, ducks and other feathered friends.

 

[Big Doggie]

that looks like a buzzard or a hawk.

Vulture

 

[cmom]

vulture

 

[CluckerFamily]

I slowed down the video. It looks like a vulture.