January 15, 2009 - A vulture show, seen in close-upuary 15, 2009 • The Suffolk Ti
1 vulture
een in.closewuu
referred to turkey vultures
showing up on the North Fork as
more or less a rarity, but down here in Florid
hey're one of the most commonly seen birds
s they drift by in their effortless soaring from
Ine thermal to another.
. Remember the old saying "The best is yet to
ome "? Well, we watched that saying get played
ut in one of the most spectacular shows one
iorning, a mere 100 feet away from where
ie sat eating breakfast. It wasn't long before
tarbara was clicking away, trying to capture on
amera this morning spectacle.
Where we live in Florida is a perfect place to
+atch birds of all sorts, but never in five years
ave we seen anything quite like the vulture
how we just witnessed. It all came about when
ie weather changed and a cold, front moved in
rith its strong winds from the north that blew
ie water out of the bay in front of us, leaving
chat I suspect was good foraging for vultures.
We sat mesmerized by these huge turkey
ultures with their eight -foot wingspans, half fly -
ig,.half flapping their wings; so close to us.The
me was around 7 a.m. and the display lasted
)r a good half hour. What struck me most was
ow big these birds were as they flew directly
verhead and how their wings dominated the ai:
)ace they maneuvered in.
The sun had just come up, showing off the
pale silver flight feathers from below the birds'
outstretched black wings. They were so close we
could see the small red heads and ivory- colored
beaks of these aerialists of the sky. The head of
the vulture has no feathers, to make feeding a
of less messy. Remember, they often feed on a
large carcass, which means reaching deep inside
he animal's innards, and if the head was covered
th feathers it would be a messy affair.
There was a continuous coming and going of
these huge black birds. At one point something
spooked them and there
Focus was a frenzy of flight. The
air was black with birds
ON and beating wings. It was a
spectacular sight!
NATURE As we finished our last
by Paul cup of coffee, the water in
Stoutenburgh front of us settled down
with its normal morning
occupants: brown pelicans,
noisy laughing gulls and diving cormorants with an
occasional great egret or blue heron that searched
quietly on the bay front for its morning meal. Oh,
and yes, for the first time as we looked even closer,
we could see an anhinga drying its wings on one of
the pilings of the dock. Like the cormorant we are
more familiar with, it dives for its food and when
necessary sits with its wings outstretched to dry off.
The same day we had that thrilling show of
vultures, Barbara was able to photograph a
red - shouldered hawk sitting on some wire right
above our place. This is a common hawk here
in Florida. It was most cooperative as Barbara
clicked away from one angle to another.'
One of the fun things about writing "Focus"
is it gives both of us a deeper understanding
of our subject. Barbara goes to the computer
while I search out what the books might turn
up. For example, have you ever thought about
what becomes of all the waste the young hawks
produce? After five days of the young messing
in the nest, nature takes over and instinct has
the birds back up to the edge of the nest, where
they shoot the waste out over the edge. Pretty
remarkable! This is done by other birds as well.l
observed this once while photographing a hum-
mingbird nest with young.
This takes care of the problem so that when
food is brought back to the nest by the parents
they have a relatively clean area in which to pres
ent the food to the young. There's a downside to
this scenario: Waste accumulates under the nest
on the ground and therefore attracts bad guys
like raccoons, and we know what that can mean.
The last bit of interesting information on
how birds cooperate among themselves is a
short bit that brings a smile as I write about it.
While researching the red - shouldered hawk for
this week's article, we ran across an interesting
comment from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
which told of watching a red - shouldered hawk
chasing an owl
It is usually the other way around: owls going
after red - shouldered hawks. In this particular
case the hawk was seen chasing the owl away
from its nest as the owl tried to take a nestling.
The hawk's mate meantime flew to the owl's
nest, took a young out and ate it! So much for
the old saving "Eat or be eaten!"
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