Mystery Bird: Black Vulture, Coragyps atratus

The dark color combined with the long neck and sunning behavior makes me say double-crested cormorant.

Actually, I'm going with black vulture. The light patches in the primaries don't look cormorant-y to me, and I've seen black vultures sunning themselves in just this manner.

I also believe it is a black vulture. In addition to the sunning behavior, the white-washed look of the legs indicate a bird of the Cathartidae family, to me. Also, it's difficult to tell with this picture, but there does not appear to be any webbing on the feet, ruling out cormorant.

I agree with John and JJ - looks like a Black Vulture, especially with the primary feathers being the color they are!

Didn't you guys notice the floppy feet? It must be a cormorant. Which one? Beats me! But I go for the cormorant.

I'm not familiar with black vultures but that tail doesn't look at all like a cormorant's too me. The pose is sufficiently buzzardy for me to agree with the vulture call.

Though cormorants use the same technique,
The longer dusty primaries and lack of the vee shaped wing shape of the cormorant make this a black vulture.
The dry dirt and dry leaves don't look too aquatic either, do they?
1hen2ducks

This is quite an interesting and curious picture.

First of all, this is a large black bird sunning itself. That gives us three main options: Black Vulture, Cormorants, or a crow or raven.

What's *really* interesting here is the tail. It's short, indicating that if it is a cormorant, it's the Double-crested, rather than the Neotropic, which is in range. (My Silbey clearly indicates that the Neotropic has a long tail.)

It's also diamond shaped, which could be important.

The main thing I have against it being a Cormorant is the wings. All the pictures and photographs I've seen of cormorants give their wings a definite "scaly" look to them. These wings lack that.

If anything, these wings look like a crow to me. Which brings me to the large, black birds that haven't been brought up thus far: Crows and Ravens.

In fact, the more I look at that tail, the more it looks like a crow or raven, rather than a vulture. The forshortening on the tail makes it look shorter than it really is; and the Black Vulture has a "short square tail" according to my Sibley.

Back to the wings. A vultures wings are *huge* compared to its body; which makes them excellent soarers. These wings are large and broad, I'll give you that, but they just don't seem big enough.

So I'm down to American Crow vs. Common Raven. Again using my Sibley, the raven has long pointed wings and an elongated, wedged shape tail. The crow has broad wings and a less dramatic tail.

Sibley also notes that for the crow "individuals with variable white wing patches are rare but regular". That light spot on the primaries sure looks like a wing patch to me. And it just doesn't look like the patch a vulture would have.

The only misgiving I have is that bit of neck, which still looks snaky to me.

But I'm going with American Crow. (And I spent too much time on this rather than writing my lab reports... oops.)

black vulture. the white patch on wing. Shape of the tail, feet and neck.