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Remote Camera Provided First Direct Video Documentation of a Coyote Taking a Turkey Vulture Nestling

Juvenile turkey vulture in flight at Grand Canyon National Park
Research · Behaviour

A remote camera on a ranch in Armstrong County, Texas, USA, provided the first published direct video documentation of a coyote (Canis latrans) preying on a turkey vulture nestling (Cathartes aura). The event occurred at a nest on the south rim of Mulberry Canyon on 15 August 2023 and was published in the Journal of Raptor Research on 1 July 2026.

The nest was on the floor of a steep cut in the canyon wall. A camera had photographed two partially feathered turkey vulture nestlings outside the nest cavity on 3 August, twelve days before the predation event.

One nestling was clearly carried from the nest

On 15 August, the camera recorded a coyote moving over the escarpment and entering the cut containing the nest. It then emerged carrying one turkey vulture nestling in its mouth and moved upslope out of view. This sequence provides the direct visual evidence on which the paper’s main claim is based.

About six minutes later, the same coyote entered the cut again. It left by a different route carrying an object that could not be identified clearly in the image. The authors considered it likely that the object was the second nestling because the coyote’s shadow was consistent with it carrying something and the remaining chick was subsequently absent. They do not present the removal of the second nestling as equally certain as the first.

Canids had previously been implicated only indirectly

Predation and attempted predation on turkey vultures have been documented only rarely. Canids, including domestic dogs and foxes, had previously been proposed as predators of nestlings from indirect evidence such as tracks, scat or proximity to dens, but the authors found no published direct visual record of a coyote taking turkey vulture young.

The paper therefore adds coyotes to the confirmed predators of turkey vulture nestlings. The authors also note that the position of this nest on the floor of a cut made it accessible to a terrestrial predator; eggs, nestlings and potentially incubating or brooding adults at similarly accessible sites may be exposed to ground-dwelling carnivores.

Sources and image credit

  1. Ray, J. D., & Ray, S. K. (2026). First Direct Video Documentation of Coyote Predation on Nestling Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura). Journal of Raptor Research, 61(1), jrr2557.Primary open-access observation paper. A remote camera in Armstrong County, Texas, recorded a coyote entering a turkey vulture nest site on 15 August 2023, leaving with one clearly visible nestling and returning about six minutes later; removal of the second nestling was considered likely but was not clearly visible.

Image: Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith — juvenile turkey vulture at the north rim of Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, USA, 4 September 2017; Wikimedia Commons / Flickr; CC BY-SA 2.0. Uncropped representative juvenile image, not one of the Texas nestlings. · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Source

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Coyote Canis latrans Explore species Turkey Vulture Cathartes aura Explore species

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