Cathartes

Cathartes is a genus of medium-sized to large carrion-feeding birds in the New World vulture family, Cathartidae, order Accipitriformes, comprising three extant species found widely across the Americas, the turkey vulture, the lesser yellow-headed vulture and the greater yellow-headed vulture, plus one extinct species known from the Quaternary of Cuba. The name derives from the Greek word katharsis, meaning purifier, referring to the role these birds play cleansing the landscape of decomposing corpses.