You know how, in those old cartoons, whenever the vultures started landing in nearby trees, that was an indication of trouble ahead for the hero?
The local Turkey Vulture flock has a roost a few miles away and they’re often seen circling in the thermals overhead.
A few years ago I encountered one dismantling a squirrel flapjack on the road:
It’s an ugly job, but somebody’s got to do it…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
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3 responses to “Look Alive!”
At the big IBM campus just outside of Boulder, there are a lot of deer trying to cross a fairly major road. I was riding my bike up there once and saw a deer that had been hit, off in the ditch right in front of IBM, with three buzzards working on what was left. Those are *big* birds, and they were less than impressed by me and my bike. They didn’t even move and I had to swerve out of the median into a traffic lane to avoid running into one. I wasn’t about to tangle with it, since when I was working at a raptor rehabilitation place they did a demo on how quickly a buzzard can strip a turkey leg clean to the bone with its razor-sharp beak.
Come back when you look like gibbage and they’ll pay you exactly the right amount of attention…
Sometimes we’ll see half a dozen of them riding the thermals over the open land around here: they don’t move a muscle unless it’s absolutely necessary, but watching them power up is impressive.
[…] overhead in thermals rising from, in these parts, sun-heated asphalt parking lots and roads, always on the alert for roadkill. A trio paused for a rest in the trees out front and I managed to get one mediocre portrait against […]