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[Button]

FYI, birds don't 'chew' with their beaks. The beak is for ripping off chunks, or cracking shells, or the like.

I took it as read that any animal too weak to even gnaw tough leather to bits would be similarly unable to tear it to shreds, at least with its mouth. A large bird of prey like an eagle would probably be able to puncture leather armor with its talons, but even then I don't think they could "tear" said armor into pieces.

Oh! No, diurnal raptors do it with their neck muscles; jaw strength is pretty much irrelevant, as long as they can hold on. They latch on to the part they want to tear off with their beaks, hold the item to the ground with one foot, and then tear away.

An eagle or hawk could definitely tear leather to pieces - they do it to their own prey all the time. A vulture would have a harder time of it, since they're used to letting bigger animals do all the hard work for them, but they could make it work in a pinch.

And a kea would actively gnaw through even the toughest leather, just for shits and giggles. They can gnaw through tires given enough time, and they're assholes enough to do it, too. They don't try to eat the rubber, though, more's the pity. There are stories of keas perching on the backs of and gnawing into live sheep while they sleep...

[Agent_Irons]

I did some research into keas. Those guys will attack healthy awake sheep(not super effectively, but even so), shred tires, steal passports, knock over garbage bins, cooperate to get food, rip out car antennas, etc etc.

So yeah. Keas, at least, don't know what's food and what's not. They just steal/destroy everything.

[SixOfSpades]

I was going to say that we seem to have vastly differing ideas of the tensile strength of hardened leather, but if real-life keas are badass enough to casually rip into car tires, I will freely concede.

[Bumber]

(so there would be no need for a special weird feature that any refuse stockpile magically degrades steel armor in it)

That's not a feature.

Everything's a feature unless Toady says otherwise.

...No. No that's simply not how bugs work.

So you say, but I don't see how things like exploding kamikaze birds could be anything except amazing new features.

[Parhelion]

Eh, back to the OP's original assertion though -- it still doesn't make a lot of sense for avians to swoop in and make off with items that the average sentient biped may have trouble moving, like armor. 

Vultures, if they have any special behavior at all, should be mostly interested in making a horrible mess of your refuse and open food stockpiles, dead animals, and battlefields. 

The only birds that I could conceivably imagine stealing things like weapons and armor would be giant and man-beast versions of 'trinket thief' birds, like ravens.  That makes sense.  Common vultures do not.