What Does “A Wake of Buzzards” Mean?
“Wake” describes buzzards gathered specifically to feed on a carcass, and it’s a grim but fitting borrowing from human funeral tradition — vultures and buzzards clustered around a dead animal much the way mourners gather around the departed. In the US, “buzzard” is the everyday name for New World vultures, especially the turkey vulture, so this is the term you’ll most often hear used for a literal feeding scene.
Turkey vultures have an unusually strong sense of smell for a bird, able to detect the gas released by decaying carcasses from over a mile away, which is exactly how a wake assembles so quickly once a carcass appears. As scavengers, they play a critical ecological role, removing carrion from the landscape and limiting the spread of disease, however unglamorous the gathering itself might look.
Example: “A wake of buzzards had already gathered by the time the rangers reached the fallen deer.”
Related: Collective Nouns for Birds · What Is a Group of Buzzards Called? · What Animals Form a Wake?