Buzzards--or really, turkey vultures

We recently returned from Bennett Springs, a wonderful old state park in Southern Missouri I've been visiting for over half a century...it's magical.

This time my poor husband got sick, so I wandered around between checking on him, sketching and delighting in the perfect fall weather.  While the chicken soup I'd made him simmered, I made one last foray to the trout stream near our cabin.  I'd intended to go elsewhere, but as I turned on the tiny park road I noticed dozens of turkey vultures perched in the trees, and turned around to find a place to park!  I scrambled down the bank and found a place to sit beside the crystalline water.

It was amazing to be that close to these big scavengers--one flew up the river at eye level, not 10 feet from me!

This is a popular trout stream, usually busy with fly fishermen; they clean their catch upstream, and these big birds do important work, cleaning up the offal that would otherwise clog the waterways.  They're graceful and almost prehistoric, and always a thrill to see up close...by the time I left it was getting dark and there were many, many more birds perched in this tree and others nearby.

Click on the title of this post for more about these amazing birds...

Morning Turkey Vultures

We usually call these buzzards, but they're not true buzzard species. That's more an American colloquialism. I got to see the staging tree full of them when I took L.S. to the vet early this morning to be neutered (poor kitty!)--ran back home for sketchbook and camera, which I'd normally have had with me. My hands were full, so I skipped it--happily I just live a couple of blocks from the park that parallels the Fishing River, and I ran back for my equipment!



In Europe, the bird called a buzzard is generally a raptor, or Buteo--here, we're more likely to call those hawks. Our turkey vultures are not true raptors--Cathartes aura lives almost exclusively on carrion, and helps keep us from being up to our ears in death! I'm always grateful for these big, graceful birds, as beautiful in flight as they are homely up close...

You can read more HERE...

Turkey Vulture Tree--Cathy Johnson

I just love these bits of serendipity! J. had to have the truck worked on this morning, and I went out to pick him up--it was somewhat earlier than we're usually up and about. We drove through the park on the way home, and I got to see the vulture tree, just FULL of the big ...birds waiting for their wings to dry enough to fly! There were already kettles of them in the sky, but I ran him on home and hurried back.

I was in luck, I got to sketch the tree pretty well laden with them...and just kept sketching till they had all dried their wings and flown. I'd lost my pencil sharpener at the Art Crawl last week and the Prismacolor black was fairly dull...I added a few more details with my Micron Pigma .01 pen, then used watercolor pencils when I got home to punch it up a bit.

I've always loved these big birds--there's a wonderful tale in Abenaki about the role they play in history--How Buzzard Got His Feathers, though there are similar tales in many tribes, including Seneca and Iroquois.* And of course, without them we'd be up to our eyebrows in carrion. (Not a pleasant thought!)

You can learn much more about them, their habitat, range, eating habits and more on Wikipedia and specifically in my area from The Missouri Conservationist.

They lack a voicebox--that explains the eerie silence. They're related to storks and flamingoes--they're not raptors.

And of course there IS always that moment when you wonder what they know that you don't. Sometimes you don't want to know!

*And by the way, HERE is one version of that story!