Monday, May 28, 2012

Turkey Vulture

Today a turkey vulture has been hanging around our house.
That must mean there's something dead nearby.  Great.

I checked, all the guineas are accounted for this morning!
If you follow my blog you know about how I've been losing guineas left and right to foxes.

Since it's not a dead guinea, maybe the Jersey Devil fox keeled over dead.  I mean, it was on it's last leg when I saw it a few days ago.  At least it appeared it may fall over dead at any given second when I saw it, but I'm no fox expert, and that thing was part demon anyway, it may have had super powers to keep it alive.


I thought maybe this turkey vulture visitor was that cute little black vulture baby that was raised in our barn last summer.  If you forgot how cute he was last year, here's a quick pic:


Ok, so we all have different opinions of "cute"...

But while turkey vulture babies look like black vulture babies, the adults don't look alike.  Today's visiting bird was definitely a turkey vulture.  Note the naked red head.  And the vultures that raised their young in my barn last year did not have the naked red head, they were black vultures. 
So there's a new visitor to Razzberry Corner.

Hello there, buddy. 

I like vultures, they are good birds.  They help me with cleanup.
However, I do wonder what's dead outside.  Vultures normally don't visit unless they are getting free dinner.  I walked all around the area where my vulture friend was hanging out this morning, but didn't see or smell anything unusual.  Hmmm...

Maybe he's just coming to say Happy Memorial Day!  I hope.


Hope you have a great Memorial Day holiday, too!

5 comments:

Mary Ann said...

I like vultures, too... they are God's Cleanup Crew... I like to watch them hang in the sky.

CaliforniaGrammy said...

In my opinion there's nothing cute about a vulture, well okay, the baby does seem "cute" in a baby sort of way. But I do appreciate them. They do a great job keeping things around here cleaned up neat and tidy!

Carolyn said...

I forgot about those little fuzzball vulture babies! Thanks again for the picture :)

We have turkey & black vultures all around here, mostly roosting in the dead snags around the property though, not so much looking for dead things, although that would be find with me. Rather have them pick up the dead stuff than me!

Dog Trot Farm said...

How odd it would seem to see Turkey Vultures in my backyard. I am so happy to hear all your guniea hens have been accounted for. Keep us posted!

Rick (Ratty) said...

These are great pictures. I'd love to get that close to one of these birds. Maybe it was just dropping in to say hi.