On Monday, October 19, 2015 at 9:34:40 AM UTC-7, SF wrote:
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

If by "buzzard" you are referring to the turkey vulture, they hunt in a different way from most other vultures. They usually fly very low and hunt mainly by sense of smell. They have huge wings, a low wing loading, and soar on microlift near the surface. They are almost always useless to soaring pilots!

Many other vultures, including the black vulture that we have here in Arizona, hunt by thermalling high enough to use visual clues. The Cape Vulture, which I met in my early gliding career in South Africa, is the only one I've experienced that seemed comfortable soaring with gliders. These have higher wing loading and need to thermal!

Mike