I love Turkey Vultures.  Rather weird I know. I’m actually not that interested with all the little song birds, hawks are cool, as are owls, but the vultures…

I suppose it comes from so many chances to watch them in flight, as they were the other day. Playing off a fast rising thunderstorm that was moving to the south of us, a dozen or so were checking out the newly mown hayfield.

Consider the view from the attic windows, out across those old blue hills. The sky: pink, gold, robin’s egg blue, except to the south where a black storm cloud rose; below lay the green fields. What one could hear was the snapping wind and the low, continuous sound of thunder.  Add the turkeys’ bizarre gobbling cry and the raven’s croak. But over this scene were those great, silent, dark birds.  They were playing, as they do so often, off of the wind from the storm. I’m reasonably sure I saw one that was working on hammerhead stalls just for the heck of it.  Looking for food, of course, as always; but mostly just flying.

There is a bit of adrenalin too, when they start to stack up above an area, so close that you can see the feathers.  Death has struck somewhere near.  But they themselves? The living wind.