Learn to read the sky. Compare Turkey and Black Vultures, follow their different flight shapes, and discover how scent, sight, and rising warm air help them find food while using almost no energy.
Can You Read Nature? · Close to Home
Look up. Watch them circle. Meet nature’s cleanup crew.
Discover vultures through lyrical storytelling, real bird science, and museum-quality artwork created for curious families.
Ages 5–14+Family nature bookArt by Mehgan Crawford
Read before you go see ten times more!
Hardcover
Hardcover + free companion ebook
$29.95Includes instant-download ebook
- Free ebook included with hardcover
- A nature book for discovering vultures close to home
- Original art that makes bird science unforgettable
- $1 to Children and Nature Network
Ebook
The nature book you can take anywhere
$12.95instant download
- Your perfect bird-watching companion, see 10x more
- Kinder to the planet, nothing in a landfill
- Soaring, scavenger science, and vulture families shine on a screen
- $1 to Children and Nature Network
Instant deliveryEbook delivered by email
Free shippingOrders over $40
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Gives back$1 supports nature
Wear the wonder
Let curiosity take flight—and wear the wonder.
Pair the hardcover nature book with the matching Vultures shirt for a gift that changes how families see the sky above them.
Choose your shirt option before adding both items to your cart.
Look closer
Every soaring circle reveals a remarkable survivor.
Meet nature’s cleanup crew. See how bald heads, powerful stomach acid, family life, and extraordinary defenses help vultures stop disease, recycle nutrients, and keep ecosystems healthy.
Meet the artist
Mehgan Crawford
Nature artist and champion of the overlooked
“I hope to inspire my daughter and other people to love nature and the world we live in.”
Hi, I'm Mehgan! Growing up in Alabama, a love for nature was built into me. My childhood was filled with visits to playgrounds with my Nana, trips to Oak Mountain State Park, afternoons spent watching Animal Planet, and days spent playing in the woods with my sisters and friends. My favorite books to check out from the school library were the ones that taught me about different animals. Being a weird kid, I've always loved the under appreciated
animals, like opossums, snakes, rats, and vultures the most.
As an adult, I still hold a great love of nature, and it serves as a great inspiration for my art. Some of my favorite things to do now are catching (and releasing cicadas in the summer, taking my daughter to the park, and visiting museums. My favorite museums are the Birmingham Museum of Art, the McWane Science Center, Early Works
Museum, and Cooks Museum of Natural History. I hope to inspire my daughter and other people to love nature and the world we live in.
Mehgan’s expressive paintings invite families to see vultures not as frightening outsiders, but as intelligent, essential members of a healthy ecosystem.
About this book
What is inside
Compare Turkey and Black Vultures, learn how vultures smell and spot food, ride thermal currents, warm and disinfect their wings, protect themselves, build nests, raise young, and serve as nature’s recyclers. Explore vulture group names, cultural history, conservation, climate change, common myths, and ten things to watch for outside.
About the author
Narrated by Neil Rosen, children’s book author and founder of WildStork. Neil writes every book as an invitation to look closer, stay longer, and discover what families miss when they move too fast.
Reading level
Ages 5 to 14. Designed for the whole family, with lyrical storytelling and real science to share together.