I have personally observed buzzards circling in sink. It usually occurs at inopportune times for me, and I think they do it just to mess with me. So right after the never follow a glider with an engine rule, is the never fully trust a buzzard rule. No personal experience with vultures, and their thermal choices.

I have some concerns about this study. It looks like they limited their "recruitment" to only one type of bird. Well that looks like discrimination to me. Were these birds given adequate compensation for their work? Were they offered medical care, vacation, medical leave? What happens if they get hurt while working? Not to mention retirement benefits.

Obviously these birds need to unionize, and until that happens the justice department needs to step in and supervise things so the rest of us can sleep well at night knowing that the lawyers are taking care of this for us.

SF