Decided to forgo further editing on the last entry, 003, and move on to the next.
Several days ago Frollie ran to our new panoramic front window, put her feet on the ledge, and began barking. Soon she was joined by her cohorts, all of them making a racket, the kind of noise sometimes reserved for the postman. I thought I had better go see since it didn't let up.
When I looked out the window, I saw a huge bird that looked like a turkey waddling through the snow in our neighbor's yard, south to north, down our hill and across the street. Well, when I looked more closely I saw that the big bird was a Turkey Vulture. A Turkey Vulture walking through a yard in our subdivision. We see them in the air frequently, and several times they have roosted in our large silver maple in the backyard, but I never saw a bird that size walking through snow that close to us.
I quieted the dogs and discovered that our yards were full of the birds, sitting on branches in the pines across the street and the oaks and maples around us. Wow! Then, when Mary looked out our front door just down from where I was, there was one sitting on our balcony railing. Nature had come calling. Whose time was up?
Unfortunately, Frollie discovered it too and yelled mightily, but not before Mary got the picture that went with 003. It seemed that the birds had snow on their wings and that their main object was to free themselves of it. Watching them was both surprising and delightful, even though those red heads are a bit disgusting. Ah well, the bird book says the hairless red heads are to prevent the vultures from contracting diseases, given the carion they eat. As far as I can tell, Simon is probably a match for their disgusting eating habits. There is nothing that dog won't eat in the house or out, dead or alive.
Actually I had met these creatures a few days before this encroachment, for while I was on the street walking, I saw them sitting in the trees at the end of the cul-de-sac, flying up and around me, then returning and sitting in one of the many trees down there. For a little while it felt as though I were in Hitchcock's Birds. Vultures swarming above me. Spooky!
However, we were not done this day either. After a short while I watched as another Turkey Vulture came ambling down the road in front of our house, north to south thus time. He (or she) was walking along as if she (or he) hadn't a care in the world. I suppose he didn't, at least until our next door neighbor, Dana, also came down her driveway, out into the street and seemed to be following the big bird, with cell phone in hand, of course. The birds in the trees got antsy and the one in the street, perceiving the threat, didn't fly away. Not what I expected. Instead, there was a red car parked across the street in the road in front of our neighbor's house. The bird took refuge under the car, of all things! Just as a cat might do. Dana followed it in the sense that she stooped down, trying to see where the bird was and what it was doing. That afternoon turned out to be very entertaining, and I don't know whether she ever got her picture.
Actually the birds were back this afternoon as the temperature almost made it to 60, or perhaps that was yesterday since I was sitting in the front room this time watching them swarm up and over the trees across the street again, while Kentucky was beating Florida. (Go Cats!). Frollie and Simon were also watching them, quietly for a change. I kept wondering whether the dog-ravaged possum had survived or whether it was dead out there somewhere under the snow that has now mostly disappeared. Since there must have been 40 or 50 vultures, I thought about what they must be finding to eat, if anything. And yet the creatures seem to thrive.
Finally, having seen one up close and personal, it was good to see them flying close to the house and up into the higher air, with their very large two-tone wings fully extended. They may be ugly creatures, but they are still truly interesting and surprising creatures as well, though I would not want one roosting on my shoulder.