Sunday, April 8, 2018

Outdoors -- the watchtower

I don't know what this was all about but these are not crows.





Crows are cowards and you can chase them off by clapping your hands as you walk toward them.
Not these guys.  These three waited until they were good and ready and then they left. They even did a wing display while I was out watching them.
It revealed silver along the feathers, not at the tips of the wings, so these are not black vultures. Also that gray in the sky is clouds, not sun, and the bird closed its wing again. Black vultures sometimes take up a "horaltic" pose in sunlight to expose the maximum wing span and soak up the sunlight for warmth. Not the day I took these shots!

We get lots of vultures wheeling around our skies. If a deer had found its way among the houses and died, I could understand why they were here. I couldn't smell it. In the yard under this set of three, a Cooper's Hawk had brought down two doves and eaten them, but that was weeks ago; there's nothing left for these guys.

After a couple of hours I looked again and the vultures were gone. I haven't seen this in the 27 years I've lived on this quad and that's why it seemed so weird.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights Reserved

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