Vulture Fest

We attended Makanda's premier (meaning only) fall event, Vulture Fest, last weekend.

Today, I had my own vulture fest. I was driving along our road when I came across more than a dozen vutures (I"m not exaggerating), feasting on a deer by the side of the road. My first thought was of the Brown family's roadkill game, The second was that I needed my camera.

I drove back, but when I got out, those wily vultures flew into the trees. I hid about twenty yards away behind a neighbor's trees, but they knew I was nearby. (How could they smell me over the rank deer?) Most of them glared at me from the trees and wouldn't come back down, while a few circled angrily overhead. After about 5 minutes (poor Louie was waiting inside the van and even the Backyardigans CD can only entertain her for a so long), I got impatient and snapped what I could. The photos aren't gory because 1-- I wasn't interested in getting closer for a photo of a nasty, partially consumed carcass, and 2-- I couldn't get the vultures to flock over it again. It looked like something out of Animal Planet, but it was just down the street. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the black vultures and turkey vultures here have a wingspan of about 5-6 feet; they're very big birds.