James T. Anderson Jeff L Cooper Tricia A. Miller Bracken Brown Anna Wrona Patricia Ortiz John Buchweitz David McRuer Ernesto Dominguez-Villegas Shannon Behmke Todd E. Katzner Vincent Slabe 2020 <p><span>Lead poisoning of scavenging birds is a global issue. However, the drivers of lead exposure of avian scavengers have been understood from the perspective of individual species, not cross‐taxa assemblages. We analyzed blood (</span><i>n</i><span> = 285) and liver (</span><i>n</i><span> = 226) lead concentrations of 5 facultative (American crows [</span><i>Corvus brachyrhynchos</i><span>], bald eagles [</span><i>Haliaeetus leucocephalus</i><span>], golden eagles [</span><i>Aquila chrysaetos</i><span>], red‐shouldered hawks [</span><i>Buteo lineatus</i><span>], and red‐tailed hawks [</span><i>Buteo jamaicensis</i><span>]) and 2 obligate (black vultures [</span><i>Coragyps atratus</i><span>] and turkey vultures [</span><i>Cathartes aura</i><span>] avian scavenger species to identify lead exposure patterns. Species and age were significant (</span><i>α</i><span> &lt; 0.05) predictors of blood lead exposure of facultative scavengers; species, but not age, was a significant predictor of their liver lead exposure. We detected temporal variations in lead concentrations of facultative scavengers (blood: median = 4.41 µg/dL in spring and summer vs 13.08 µg/dL in autumn and winter;&nbsp;</span><i>p</i><span> = &lt;0.001; liver: 0.32 ppm in spring and summer vs median = 4.25 ppm in autumn and winter;&nbsp;</span><i>p</i><span> = &lt;0.001). At the species level, we detected between‐period differences in blood lead concentrations of bald eagles (</span><i>p</i><span> = 0.01) and red‐shouldered hawks during the winter (</span><i>p</i><span> = 0.001). During summer, obligate scavengers had higher liver lead concentrations than did facultative scavengers (median = 1.76 ppm vs 0.22 ppm;&nbsp;</span><i>p</i><span> = &lt;0.001). These data suggest that the feeding ecology of avian scavengers is a determinant of the degree to which they are lead exposed, and they highlight the importance of dietary and behavioral variation in determining lead exposure.&nbsp;</span></p> application/pdf 10.1002/etc.4680 en Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Feeding ecology drives lead exposure of facultative and obligate avian scavengers in the eastern United States article