With sooty black plumage, a bare black head, and neat white stars under the wingtips, Black Vultures are almost dapper. Whereas Turkey Vultures are lanky birds with teetering flight, Black Vultures are compact birds with broad wings, short tails, and powerful wingbeats. Highly social birds with fierce family loyalty, Black Vultures share food with relatives, feeding young for months after they’ve fledged.
It lays its eggs in caves or hollow trees or on the bare ground, and generally raises two chicks each year, which it feeds by regurgitation.

Black Vultures feed almost exclusively on carrion, locating it by soaring high in the skies on thermals. From this vantage they can spot carcasses and also keep an eye on Turkey Vultures—which have a more developed sense of smell—and follow them toward food. Their carrion diet includes feral hogs, poultry, cattle, donkeys, raccoons, coyotes, opossums, striped skunks, and armadillos. Sometimes Black Vultures wade into shallow water to feed on floating carrion, or to catch small fish. They occasionally kill skunks, opossums, night-herons, leatherback turtle hatchlings, and livestock, including young pigs, lambs, and calves. They also often investigate dumpsters and landfills to pick at human discards.