Few animals have a worse reputation than the vulture. But is it deserved? With Vulture, Katie Fallon offers an irresistible argument to the contrary, tracing a year in the life of a typical North American turkey vulture. Turkey vultures, also known as buzzards, are the most widely distributed and abundant scavenging birds of prey on the planet, found from central Canada to the southern tip of Argentina and nearly everywhere in between. Deftly drawing on the most up-to-date scientific papers and articles and weaving those in with interviews with world-renowned raptor and vulture experts and her own compelling natural history writing, Fallon examines all aspects of the bird's natural history: breeding, incubating eggs, raising chicks, migrating, and roosting. The result is an intimate portrait of an underappreciated bird--one you'll never look at in the same way again.

Katie Fallon is co-founder of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, a nonprofit research, education, and rehabilitation center for injured birds. A member of the International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators, she has glove-trained a wide variety of raptor species, including turkey vultures, hawks, owls, and falcons. She is the author, previously, of Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird. She lives in West Virginia with her family of human and birds.