Vultures?

[Duckie doodle]

Do I need to worry about vultures going after my duck? I’ve tried looking this up but I can’t get a confident answer, I’m not sure if they’re black vultures or turkey vultures or what the difference is really. The ones I’m talking about are circling high up in the sky and there’s often quite a few of them! I was out in my back yard today with my duck and 3 dogs, Popcorn was in the stream and the dogs were running around and I looks up to see at least 15 vultures circling above, some coming quite low.
From my understanding they only go after dead things, but they were making me uneasy today. Popcorn is always watching them, and will sometimes take cover. When he’s out in the yard with me he won’t go too far from me anyways, but I just want to know how on guard I have to be!
Thanks! Pics cause he’s so handsome

So to my understanding turkey vultures are scavengers, they mainly eat already dead, decomposed animals. I'm not sure about a regular vulture but be aware of hawks and eagles. I've had chickens get picked up from a red tail hawk before.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Go to hawkmountain.org for good info on both turkey and black vultures. It seems black vultures are more likely than turkey vultures to kill and eat small, sick birds or mammals, but vultures lack strong enough feet to carry anything away. As @Cparrott said, worry more about hawks in your area. Good luck!

 

[Popcorntheduck]

Go to hawkmountain.org for good info on both turkey and black vultures. It seems black vultures are more likely than turkey vultures to kill and eat small, sick birds or mammals, but vultures lack strong enough feet to carry anything away. As @Cparrott said, worry more about hawks in your area. Good luck!

Thank you! Yes I’m always on the look out for hawks! The vultures have just been everywhere recently so I wanted to know how worried I had to be of these flying creatures as well!

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Thank you! Yes I’m always on the look out for hawks! The vultures have just been everywhere recently so I wanted to know how worried I had to be of these flying creatures as well!

You're welcome. My guess is there's something dead in the area attracting these birds. Once they get it taken care of, they'll move on... hmm. Is there a landfill in the area or anything else that might be attracting them? You say this is something new?

 

[Popcorntheduck]

No landfill, but could definitely have been something dead. I live on a small farm with a pond, surrounded by woods. I’ve seen 1 or 2 flying around before, usually high up, but this was an excessive amount and some were coming quite low. I’d think it would have to be something big to attract so many, but I definitely didn’t see anything!

 

[BigBlueHen53]

A deer will draw a bunch. Sometimes a roadkill or, sadly, a poached deer, where only the choicest cuts are quickly removed, will also draw a lot of vultures.

 

[cmom]

We see them here quite often. I think here they are mostly after road kill. We are rural too on a dead end road. The main road is about a mile away and sometimes when I go to town I see road kill. Awhile back there was a wild pig that got hit and there was a lot feasting on it. I saw a ton of birds in one spot so I had to go investigate. There is a marina on the other side of out county where the commercial fisherman bring their catches. There are loads of birds hanging around there because they are waiting for the fish scraps. They clean fish/seafood for their market.