Thursday, October 22, 2009

Vultures

Today was a lovely autumn day - sunny skies, temperatures hovering around 70 degrees, leaves starting to change. I decided to take advantage of the weather and go for a walk around my neighborhood. I took my camera with me with the intention of capturing images of fall in my neighborhood. I imagined pictures of colorful leaves and mums in bloom. I never imaged this...



Best I can tell, this is a turkey vulture. He was hanging out in the top of my neighbor's tree. He doesn't look like much here, but let me assure you that when he took off in flight...




he was HUGE! At first there were just two, but later there were as many as six flying around.



I found myself hoping that they weren't very hungry. I felt a little outnumbered. The other birds in the neighborhood didn't seem very happy to have the turkey vultures around and were making quite a lot of noise. The vultures didn't seem to care as they slowly glided on the air currents.




I'm not sure where the vultures came from, because I promise they are not a common sight in our suburban development. I do know that they are on the list of birds which can be seen at near-by Hawk Mountain. According to their website 40 turkey vultures were counted there today and a comment was posted that said "turkey vultures on the move today". I guess that's as good an explanation for my sighting as any.


I did manage to get images of colorful leaves and fall mums as I expected, but they seemed a little sedate compared to these.

6 comments:

Jeanette Jobson said...

Wow. I can understand why you felt a little intimidated with such large birds in numbers flying around. I've never seen a vulture of any kind in the wild, but I know the are big.

You got some amazing photos, great stuff!

Stacy said...

Jeanette, and here I was thinking you had probably seen dozens of vultures. I didn't think there was much wild life that you hadn't experienced given your location.

Jennifer Rose said...

i use to see the all the time in Canada, not pretty birds but impressive when they take to the sky. you got some nice shots of them :)

M J Muir said...

When I see eagles I feel like it must be a good omen.
If I ever saw such a number of large vultures I think I would feel chills.
I wonder if there was a body in the neighbourhood.

Stacy said...

Thanks Jennifer! Their flight was very impressive taking so little effort for such a large bird.

Blue, I wasn't entirely sure what type of bird it was when I was taking the pictures. I am hoping that no one in the neighborhood is missing any pets.

Jo Castillo said...

We have lots of them here. They roost in a property a couple of houses down the way. Our daughter often takes their photos. They fly in such beautiful patterns, but they are sooooo ugly when not flying. Ha. Nice work.