Most people have favourite birds, though choosing one species from so many is nigh on impossible.  I have always had a particular fondness for turkey vultures.*  That they are a necessary and unmistakable sign of mortality perhaps plays into it.  But mainly it is something about those great, silent wings.  It was a moment of brilliance the other morning, one of those crystal mornings that portend the early fall when the sky is a clear, shining aquamarine and the sun is a white-gold star, to watch the building column that spiralled ever higher, swift shadows between the land and the sun.  It was a flock of perhaps ten, probably migrating, drawn to the hayfield to check out the mowing.  They are clearly intelligent, having long since learned that machinery in hayfield means food.  Unlike crows or gulls, there is never any sound, though I believe they do talk when eating or roosting, just the sweep of their wings.

*I would not care to have them roosting near my house though, by all accounts that is less than desirable