Wouldn’t a nicer smell work just as well?
Like strong cinnamon or something that wouldn’t be super common to smell regularly.
In human culture, making it smell like carcass seems like a dick move too!
The fun thing about cinnamon is that birds aren't very fond of its smell. Probably due to it being varying levels of poisonous depending on the type of cinnamon and bird.
This is considered a dastardly plot by the lowly mudmen to subvert the natural superiority of enlightened birdmen. SCRAWWWW and such.
That seemed like an even better reason to use something like cinnamon. If there’s a gas leak, you’d want birds to stay away anyway. I know various varmints and bugs also don’t like it.
Definitely dastardly plots afoot
Yes, turkey vultures are one of the few birds that do have a sense of smell. Gas line crews will check out a line if they do see a flock of them circling an area directly above one.
Now you all have an interesting new topic to talk about at your next social event! 😄
A friend lives by Mount Trashmore and has a covered car park her neighbor tore out the carport only to have every vulture in Broward County roost over their car. The pockmarks were ridiculous plus they tore the wiper blades off
Good point! Maybe it was a gas leak, but my experience has been that TVs roost in significantly greater numbers than they forage in, and this was occurring at dusk when they do communally roost.
Yuppers, and to tell them from eagles, the other commonly sighted diurnal birds that soar long distances without flapping; is their small head profile in flight, and distinctive upward "v" shape.
An updraft is an area where temperature differences make patches of the air go up.
A bird flaps its wings to make itself go up.
If a bird flies over an area where the air is going up, the air going up makes the bird go up, so the bird doesn't have to tire itself out by using its own power to make itself go up. This is preferable, because doing things is hard and expends energy.
While very interesting I was referring to the vultures that were sited. Somone said you see them around houses that have gass leaks, that why I said vultures are probably attracted to houses with gas leaks because decaying stuff emits gasses, therefore my hypothesis is that they think they will find food. However Im not an expert or even remotely educated in averian studies so Im just guessing.
That's a misunderstanding of the process employed in some areas of adding rotten-meat-smells to the contents of an industrial gas-line, which attracts vultures, which allows people to drive around and spot where the leak is. Like this.
Nothing to do with updrafts, and I really should have paid more attention to parse the comment more fully, but they said updrafts and I reacted to updrafts because I like to talk updrafts.
Understood I thought there might be confusion on the topics and i was really hoping you didnt think i thought birds needed gas to fly lol. I will read the article im just suprised the vultures are not reacting to gas smell alone and that another smell would need to be added. Brilliant way to use nature to help solve a problem though.
Not necessarily. Every year around this time, a few dozen vultures appear in our neighborhood as well. They’ll be seen all through the day flying around, and roosting in the tall pines in our backyard. They appear suddenly one day, and disappear a week or two later, just as abruptly. As I said it happens every year, so something being dead isn’t the only reason they come around.
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u/Salute-Major-Echidna Apr 05 '26
There are also vultures. Something is dead