If you’re pressed for time, here’s the quick answer: Vultures soar and glide more, relying on air currents to stay aloft, while hawks flap their wings frequently to actively fly and maneuver. Vultures have longer, broader wings compared to hawks for soaring flight.
Vultures and hawks are both raptors, but they have adapted differently for locating food sources, resulting in different flight styles and wing shapes. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll highlight the key differences between vultures and hawks in flight and behavior.
Vulture Flight Style and Wings
Soaring and Gliding
Vultures are incredibly energy-efficient flyers, relying primarily on soaring and gliding to get around. Their large wingspans allow them to utilize thermal columns and updrafts to gain altitude without flapping their wings.
Once at a sufficient height, vultures will fold their wings slightly back and glide long distances with minimal effort. According to All About Birds, turkey vultures are able to glide up to 6 miles from a height of only 1000 feet!
Research has shown that vultures spend an astounding 75-90% of their flight time gliding. By taking advantage of rising warm air and spiraling upwards in loops 5-10 km wide, these efficient soarers can minimize the energy spent on active flapping.
This allows them to focus more attention on scanning the ground with their incredible eyesight to spot fresh carrion.
Broad, Long Wings
A key adaptation that facilitates vultures’ predominantly soaring and gliding flight style are their exceptionally broad wings. Relative to their body size and weight, vultures have some of the largest wingspans of all birds.
California condors, for example, boast an impressive wingspan stretching nearly 10 feet from tip to tip! Yet their bodies only weigh around 20 pounds fully grown. Similarly, turkey vultures have wingspans approaching 6 feet, despite rather petite bodies of 4-5 pounds.
The expansive shape and sheer surface area of vulture wings generates essential lift for prolonged soaring. When outstretched, those broad wings also provide stability and allow subtle adjustments to direction without the need for rapid flapping. According to the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, the wings of turkey vultures are designed to withstand turbulent winds and enable graceful maneuvering at a wide range of speeds and altitudes.
Hawk Flight Style and Wings
Flapping Flight
Hawks rely primarily on flapping flight to propel themselves through the air. Their flight style consists of a series of rapid wing beats interspersed with short glides. This allows hawks to take advantage of thermals and updrafts to gain altitude and soar, while still retaining the ability to maneuver and change direction quickly.
On average, hawks beat their wings 3-7 times per second during flapping flight. This quick, rhythmic motion provides the thrust and lift hawks need to get airborne and stay aloft. The amount of flapping varies depending on the hawk species and flight conditions.
For example, large buteos like red-tailed hawks do more gliding, while small accipiters like sharp-shinned hawks flap almost constantly.
One key advantage of flapping flight is maneuverability. Hawks can turn, dive, and change speed rapidly by altering their wing beats. This allows them to adeptly chase prey through tangled brush or swerving through tree branches when hunting.
It also helps hawks adjust their course while migrating long distances.
Short, Broad Wings
Hawks have short, broad wings compared to many other birds. For example, a red-tailed hawk’s wingspan is typically around 4 to 5 feet, while their body length is only about 1 to 2 feet. Shorter wings create less drag, allowing hawks to fly faster and more efficiently.
In addition, the wide surface area of hawk wings helps generate adequate lift despite their small size. The broad shape also improves maneuverability and stability in flight. The wings allow hawks to expertly ride air currents and thermals in order to gain altitude with minimal effort.
Different hawk species have adapted their wing size and shape to match their preferred hunting styles and habitats. Long-winged harriers have wings designed for patrolling open areas, while short-winged accipiters are built for fast dashes through dense woods.
But in general, the stout proportions of hawk wings provide an optimal balance of speed, agility, and gliding ability.
Locating Food Sources
Vultures Rely on Eyesight
Vultures have incredibly sharp eyesight for locating food sources from the air (1). Their eyesight is estimated to be up to 8 times stronger than humans, with some speculating they can spot decaying animals from over a mile away (2).
This allows vultures to scan tens of miles while circling in the sky to find food.
A key factor in a vulture’s strong vision are light-filtering pigments in their eyes. These pigments filter shorter wavelengths of light which sharpen distance viewing (3). Their eyes also have a large number of light-detecting cells on the retina to spot faint objects from far away (4).
Interestingly, turkey vultures lack these advanced eyesight adaptations. Yet they still excel at locating animal carcasses before other vulture species. Researchers now believe turkey vultures rely strongly on their sense of smell to find food rather than sight (5).
They have specialized olfactory cells and a large olfactory bulb in their brains to detect ethyl mercaptan – the gas emitted as animals begin decomposing (6). This suggests different vulture species use sight, smell or a combination to zone in on decaying animals.
Hawks Use Eyesight and Hearing
Like vultures, hawks also have exceptional distance vision to spot potential prey. Their forward-facing eyes with binocular vision allows precise depth perception when targeting prey (7). And they have more color vision cells on the retina to spot small camouflaged animals (8).
But hawks also rely heavily on their sense of hearing. Many species like red-tailed hawks will patrol territories while emitting high-pitched squeals. Scientists believe they use these squeals to startle hidden animals like rodents into revealing their location (9).
Once prey starts moving, a hawk’s special feathers help amplify sound. The distinctively shaped facial discs of owls perform a similar function. This gives raptors like hawks “sound pictures” to hone in on specific locations (10).
So between long-distance sight and sound enhancement, hawks are equipped to find active, hidden prey in addition to visible carrion.
| Vultures | Hawks |
| Spot decaying animals for food | Spot live animals for prey |
| Rely strongly on eyesight, some species use smell | Rely on eyesight and hearing senses |
- https://journeynorth.org/tm/TurkeyVulture/KeenVision.html
- https://www.audubon.org/news/why-do-vultures-have-such-great-sense-smell
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960982209017726
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/3889105
- https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/how-smell-helps-vultures-find-food/
- https://www.audubon.org/magazine/january-february-2014/why-turkey-vulture-worlds-smelliest-bird
- https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/how-birds-see-the-world-hearing-vision/
- https://safarivet.com/hawk-vs-eagle-eyes/
- https://www.audubon.org/news/why-do-red-tailed-hawks-screech
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silent-owl-flies-with-ac/
Energy Efficiency
Vultures Conserve Energy
Vultures are remarkably efficient at conserving energy while in flight. Their large wingspans and light bodies allow them to soar for hours without flapping their wings. Vultures will take advantage of thermals, which are columns of rising warm air, to gain altitude without expending much energy.
Once at a higher altitude, they can glide long distances with minimal effort. According to a study, turkey vultures only flap their wings around 1% of the total time spent in flight. This ability to conserve energy by soaring and gliding allows vultures to search enormous territories for carrion without tiring.
Hawks Active Hunting Uses More Energy
In contrast to vultures, hawks are active hunters and thus expend more energy in flight. Hawks rely on powerful wing beats during hunting to accelerate and maneuver swiftly in pursuit of prey. Flapping flight is far more metabolically costly than soaring flight.
According to a study, the metabolic rate of flapping flight in hawks is 15-20 times higher than the metabolic rate when perched at rest. Hunting hawks like the peregrine falcon can reach speeds over 200 mph during a stoop or dive, but maintaining these high speeds requires a tremendous amount of energy.
Hawks also use more energy maintaining territorial boundaries or performing aerial courtship displays. While hawks may be powerful and agile fliers, their active hunting lifestyle burn through energy far more quickly than the soaring turkey vulture.
Maneuverability and Speed
Hawks More Agile and Faster
When it comes to maneuverability and speed, hawks have a clear advantage over vultures. Hawks are incredibly agile birds of prey, capable of making quick, aerobatic turns and dives to catch their prey. Their streamlined bodies and long, pointed wings allow them to achieve high speeds in flight.
In multiple studies, Cooper’s hawks have been recorded diving at speeds over 120 mph while pursuing prey through dense vegetation (Audubon). Similarly, the peregrine falcon is considered the fastest bird on Earth, reaching diving speeds of over 200 mph.
In comparison, vultures are much less maneuverable. With large, broad wings optimized for soaring instead of flapping flight, vultures cannot match the aerial agility of hawks and falcons. A turkey vulture, for example, can only reach airspeeds of around 65 mph.
Vultures Less Maneuverable
The tradeoff for vultures is their incredible soaring ability. Once a thermal column or updraft lifts them upward, vultures can gracefully ride the rising hot air and cover vast distances while exerting minimal energy (eBird). This allows them to spot carrion from impressive heights.
However, if faced with an aerial dogfight, the vulture would likely not prevail. Lacking the speed and agility for evasive maneuvers, tight turns, or rapid changes in direction, vultures are easily outpaced by faster raptors like falcons in flight.
While turkey vultures have excellent vision, their slow airspeeds also make it difficult to chase down live prey. So vultures rely on their efficient soaring abilities and razor-sharp eyesight to scavenge carcasses on the ground rather than chasing food in midair.
Conclusion
In summary, vultures and hawks have adapted different flight styles and wing shapes to match their foraging strategies. Vultures soar on air currents and have long, broad wings for efficient gliding. Hawks flap frequently and have shorter, broader wings for active flying and hunting maneuvers.
Understanding how form follows function in these raptors provides fascinating insights into avian evolution.
