Go ahead and search for buzzard vs vulture pictures on your phone. What do you see? If you’re in North America, you’re likely looking at a Turkey Vulture with that iconic bald, red head. But if you’re sitting in a pub in the English countryside, your screen is showing a broad-winged hawk.
It's confusing. Honestly, it’s a mess.
The word "buzzard" is one of those linguistic traps that makes birders roll their eyes. In the United States, "buzzard" is slang for a vulture. In Europe, a buzzard is a completely different animal—a Buteo hawk. If you're trying to identify a bird from a photo, you have to know which continent the photographer was standing on, or you’ll get the ID wrong every single time.
Nature doesn't care about our labels. Evolution, however, has a funny way of making things look the same when they do the same job.
The Great Name Mix-up
Why do we do this to ourselves? History. When European settlers arrived in the Americas, they saw big, dark birds soaring in circles. They looked vaguely like the buzzards (hawks) back home in England. So, they called them buzzards. It stuck.
Fast forward a few centuries, and now we have a naming convention that is technically incorrect but socially permanent. If you’re looking at buzzard vs vulture pictures to settle a bet, here is the ground truth: All "buzzards" in America are actually vultures, but not all "buzzards" in Europe are vultures. In fact, none of them are.
A New World vulture, like the Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) or the Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus), is more closely related to storks than to the hawks that Europeans call buzzards.
Think about that for a second.
You’ve got two birds that look similar in flight, but one is a specialized scavenger with a sense of smell that can detect a dead mouse from a mile away, and the other is a high-speed predator that strikes live rabbits. They aren't even on the same branch of the family tree.
Visual Cues in Buzzard vs Vulture Pictures
When you're scrolling through images, the first thing you should look for is the head. Vultures are famous for being bald. It’s not a fashion choice; it’s a hygiene necessity. When you spend your afternoon neck-deep in a deer carcass, you don't want feathers trapping bacteria and rot.
European Buzzards (like Buteo buteo) have fully feathered heads. They look like "standard" hawks. They have sharp, hooked beaks designed for tearing fresh meat, not just scavenging.
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Then there’s the "dihedral."
That’s a fancy word for the V-shape a bird makes when it flies. Turkey Vultures are the kings of the dihedral. They rock back and forth in the wind, rarely flapping, looking like they’re about to tip over. If your picture shows a bird soaring with wings held in a flat, straight line, you’re likely looking at a hawk or an eagle, or perhaps a Black Vulture, which has a much flatter profile than its red-headed cousin.
Proportional Differences
Vultures are generally larger. A Turkey Vulture has a wingspan that can reach six feet. That's huge.
The Common Buzzard of Europe is much more compact. It has a wingspan of about four feet. If you put them side-by-side in a photo, the vulture looks like a heavy-duty glider, while the buzzard looks like a tactical fighter jet.
Wait. Look at the tail.
Vultures often have relatively short, squared-off or rounded tails. The Black Vulture’s tail is so short it barely sticks out past its wings. European buzzards have fan-shaped tails that they use for precise maneuvering while hunting live prey.
The Turkey Vulture vs. The Black Vulture
Even within the "vulture" category in North America, people get the pictures mixed up.
Turkey Vultures have that red head and silver-grey feathers along the entire back edge of their wings. Black Vultures have grey heads and only have white "stars" at the very tips of their wings.
Black Vultures are also much more aggressive. While the Turkey Vulture is a solitary sniffer, Black Vultures hang out in gangs. They don’t have a great sense of smell, so they just watch the Turkey Vultures. When the Turkey Vulture finds food, the Black Vultures swoop in and bully them off the kill.
It’s a rough neighborhood out there.
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Why the distinction actually matters
You might think, "Who cares? They’re both big brown birds."
Conservationists care. Farmers care.
In the mid-20th century, many raptor species—both vultures and buzzards—were decimated by pesticides like DDT. Today, vultures face a different threat: lead poisoning from eating gut piles left by hunters using lead ammunition.
Vultures are nature's cleaning crew. They have stomach acid that is literally strong enough to dissolve anthrax and botulism. Without them, our fields would be breeding grounds for disease. Realizing the difference in buzzard vs vulture pictures helps you understand the ecosystem you’re looking at.
If you see a "buzzard" in a field in France, it might be looking for a vole. If you see a "buzzard" in a field in Texas, it’s probably waiting for a cow to finish dying.
The Old World vs. New World Divide
Just to make things even more complicated, there are Old World vultures. These live in Africa, Asia, and Europe. They look like American vultures but they aren't actually related. This is what biologists call "convergent evolution."
Two different groups of birds ended up looking exactly the same because they were solving the same problem: how to eat dead stuff efficiently.
Old World vultures, like the Griffon Vulture, are massive. Some have wingspans nearing ten feet. They don't have the incredible sense of smell that our American Turkey Vultures have. They rely entirely on their eyesight.
So, if you’re looking at a photo of a massive, feathered-neck bird on a cliff in the Himalayas, that’s an Old World Vulture. If it’s a smaller, brown hawk in a tree in Germany, that’s a Buzzard. If it’s a red-headed scavenger on a fence post in Ohio, that’s a Vulture—even if the local farmer swears it’s a buzzard.
Identifying by Flight Patterns
Look at the "fingers" at the end of the wings in your pictures.
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Vultures have very pronounced primary feathers that look like splayed fingers. This helps them catch thermals—rising columns of warm air. They are masters of low-energy flight. They can soar for hours without a single flap.
The European Buzzard flaps more often. Its flight is more purposeful, often punctuated by a "mewing" call that sounds almost like a cat.
Vultures, on the other hand, are mostly silent. They don't have a syrinx (the bird version of a voice box). The most they can do is hiss or grunt. If you see a video or hear audio of a "vulture" screaming like a hawk, it’s either a hawk or a Hollywood sound effect. Movies love to put hawk screams over footage of vultures because vultures sound pathetic in real life.
How to Get the Best Wildlife Photos
If you're trying to take your own buzzard vs vulture pictures, you need to understand lighting.
Because these birds are dark, they often show up as black silhouettes against a bright sky. This is the worst way to identify them. You want "golden hour" light—early morning or late afternoon—when the sun is low. This hits the underside of the wings and reveals the silver-grey patterns on a Turkey Vulture or the mottled brown of a Common Buzzard.
Also, watch the behavior.
- Is the bird hunched over on the ground with its wings spread out? That’s a vulture "horaltic pose." They do this to bake off bacteria or dry their wings.
- Is the bird hovering in one spot over a field (kiting)? That’s a buzzard or a hawk. Vultures don't really kite; they're too heavy and built for gliding, not hovering.
- Is it soaring in a group? A group of vultures in the air is called a "kettle." They use each other to find where the best thermals are.
Real-World Examples of Misidentification
In 2023, a series of viral photos claimed to show "giant buzzards" attacking livestock in the American Midwest. Upon closer inspection by experts at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, these were clearly Black Vultures.
The distinction was vital because Black Vultures are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Farmers were losing calves and wanted to take action, but identifying them correctly meant they had to seek federal permits rather than just grabbing a shotgun. If they had been "buzzards" (hawks), the behavior would have been entirely different, as hawks rarely attack healthy, large livestock.
Understanding the bird in the photo changes the legal and ecological context of the situation.
Actionable Identification Steps
To truly tell what you’re looking at in a photo, go through this mental checklist:
- Location check: If the photo is from North or South America, call it a vulture. If it's from Europe or Asia, it could be a buzzard (hawk) or an Old World vulture.
- The Head Test: Look for feathers. Feathers mean it's a hawk/buzzard. Skin means it's a vulture.
- The Wing Shape: Does it look like a "V" (vulture) or is it flat (hawk/buzzard)?
- The Tip of the Wing: Check for the "fingers." Long, dramatic feathers are typical of vultures.
- The Tail: Short and stubby usually points toward a vulture. A long, steerable tail points toward a buzzard.
Don't let the colloquialisms of your region trip you up. Language is fluid, but biology is specific. Next time you see a dark shape circling high above the interstate, don't just call it a buzzard. Look for the rock and tilt of the wings. Look for the silver lining on the feathers. Call it what it is.
If you want to dive deeper into raptor identification, start by downloading a regional-specific app like Merlin Bird ID. It uses AI to analyze your photos and compare them against millions of data points, which is a lot more reliable than guessing based on what your grandpa called them. Stop relying on low-resolution silhouettes. Get a pair of 8x42 binoculars and see the feather detail for yourself. The more you look, the more the "buzzard" myth disappears, replaced by the reality of some of the most specialized and fascinating birds on the planet.