Rapt-ure

A broad-winged hawk was sitting at the side of the road the other day. About two feet tall, with a rusty brown-and-white speckled belly and a sharply hooked beak, the hawk was enjoying the morning sun, every now and then turning its head to watch the passing motorists.

Every now and then, I'll hear the distinctive call of the broad-winged hawk coming from within the forest behind our home. The ear-piercing "Caaaaall!" often sends the little songbirds that gather at my feeders fleeing for protective cover... in the very woods from which the hawk called.

Smart hawk.

My 16 year old, M, never fails to remind me that each of the colorful birds seen at and around Forest's Edge all descended from the dinosaurs. Watching a black-capped chickadee or a sunny goldfinch, I sometimes forget facts like this, but it is always present in my mind whenever I catch site of a raptor.

Perhaps amongst the most majestic of all birds, the raptors -- also known as birds of prey -- are hunters, sometimes of fish, mammals, and smaller birds, occasionally of carrion (or ex-animals, as Monty Python might phrase it). Not a day goes by here that I do not hear the call of a hawk (in addition to the broad-winged, sharp-shinned hawks and red-tailed hawks call this area home) or see the circling dance of several raptors overhead.

According to the local nature center, bald eagles also frequent this part of the state, but I have yet to see one in the wild... unless you count M's bald-eagle kite, which also tends to send my songbirds skittering.

Daily, however, the sight of two or more raptors idly gliding through the air above our acreage never fails to send me running for the binoculars in the hopes that I might be able to identify these as bald eagles, our national bird, or at least one of the rarer hawks -- the Northern Harrier, for instance. Unfortunately, I need better eyes, or better binoculars, or both, because I can never zoom in close enough to see anything other than outstretched wings silently gliding overhead.

I began studying the angle of those outstretched wings, the color of the rows of feathers, the glide versus the flap, to see if I could better identify our regular raptor bunch. And bunch is indeed the term, as there have been times I've seen more than half a dozen of these over our woods. Still, I wasn't able to pinpoint which bird of prey this was.

J, however, took one look and declared, "Turkey vulture." He smiled smugly and pointed at the square shape of the tailfeathers of the birds up above.

Darn it, but he was right.

Turkey vultures? I had hoped for something more elegant, more awe-inspiring, more...attractive. With its bald head (and that's literally bald, to keep from fouling its feathers at the carcasses it eats) and pink skin, the turkey vulture is not going to win any birdie beauty contests. The stigma of being a vulture -- waiting for death to come to dehydrated desert hikers -- doesn't help it much, nor does the fact that it feeds its young by regurgitating the carrion it eats. Still, I have to admire its design: talons made for walking up to its food rather than clutching it (perfect for approaching road kill); a developed sense of smell that few birds have (the better to sniff out putrefying flesh); and that clean, bald head (no mess to clean up after eating).

Nope, still doesn't do it for me.

Ah, well. It takes all kinds of creatures to make Nature work well, and the turkey vulture has its place in the local circle of life, too. With so many circling overhead during prime fledgling season, I imagine that it's up to the vultures to clean the woods of baby birds that couldn't survive outside the nest as well as weaker mammals who aren't succeeding in summer-heat survival. The poor wild turkey that was killed in our backyard about a month ago (most likely by a coyote) was picked clean within a week, most likely by a turkey vulture or two... which, incidentally, pooh-poohed the fresh house sparrows we left out for them nearby. Too little meat, too many bones, I suppose.

In the meantime, I'll keep count of our bluebird couple's chicks and, if necessary, M has his eagle kite at the ready to keep the turkey vultures from getting any ideas about the chubby little mammals (aka M's littlest brothers) that inhabit this neck of the woods. I'm sure our groundhogs heartily approve.