Vultures

I can’t believe that I’m blogging about vultures.

I’m no raptor expert. I learned almost everything that I know about vultures from Jim Henson’s “The Dark Crystal.” (BTW, I fell in love with “The Dark Crystal” when I saw it on the big screen years ago when I was a very small child. Last Thanksgiving, I made my teenage sister Olivia watch it with me on my laptop. Olivia’s assessment: “That was so cheesy.” Somewhere in the great beyond, Jim Henson sits on a cloud and wonders who took his essence.)

Anyway – Jonathan’s school gave him yesterday (Monday) off since they had an all-day function on Sunday. I took Monday as a vacation day from my own job. We went to the lake  – Lake Arthur at Moraine State Park.

I initially planned to leave my Nikon with its wide lens at home because I don’t own a waterproof case for it, and we planned to spend most of the day sailing. I grabbed it right before we left because I usually see interesting things when I DON’T have my camera.

The lake – and the entire park – was gorgeous yesterday. Sunny, just a few clouds, not too humid, temperatures in the 70’s. A nice sailing wind for beginners such as ourselves.

When we got to our boat in the dry dock at Watts Bay Marina, I saw a large black bird circling over the boats.

“An eagle!”

I jumped out of our truck with my camera and saw a second large black bird. And then a third large black bird.

I turned around and saw still more large black birds flying over the lake.

The sky was just full of large black birds. With large black wings.

“Jonathan! There’s an eagle nest here!”

We hadn’t seen eagles all summer at the marina. However, all of our trips to the marina were weekend trips. Yesterday was a Monday after Labor Day. Maybe the eagles came out from hiding after all of the crowds left.

I hummed. “Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona . . .”

Did you ever see that video on Youtube of the guy who sees a double rainbow and then yells “Double rainbow! Double rainbow!” until he starts to cry? Well, Jonathan can testify that I acted this same way about these birds.

The entire time that I yelled, I took photo after photo of the sky. I hoped to get a shot of an eagle or eagles flying over Lake Arthur. Or maybe these were hawks? Still, if I could just get one nice shot  . . .

One of the birds landed in the grass by the lake, sort of close to me. I walked still closer, and zoomed in.

The bird actually looked like a . . . hawk? No, wait, a vulture?

About this same time, a man walked his border collie past the boat dock and had a short conversation with Jonathan.

I said to Jonathan a few minutes later, “I think these might be vultures.”

Jonathan said, “That guy just told me these are turkey vultures.”

The birds all disappeared a few minutes later. We can’t see large parts of the lake or the park from the shore of Watts Bay, and I didn’t see them again, so I don’t know where they actually live or if they spent the rest of the day at the lake.

When we got home last night, I pulled up the Wikipedia entry for “turkey vulture” and the picture for this entry resembled the bird that landed close to me.

That’s how I ended up with over 40 photos of vultures.  I have one photo with 10 vultures in it. I almost pasted a very few of the bird photos on Facebook labled as “raptors at the lake.” But no, just admit it. These were vultures.

You know what else qualify as vultures? Condors. Condors are vultures also. Yet parks all over the U.S. are named after condors.

I hope that the vultures enjoyed the lake yesterday as much as I did.