It's Not a California Condor, but....

In a recent blog I mentioned that the most common bird I saw on a recent road trip from Maryland to Florida and back was the Black Vulture. Well, today before leaving for work we heard a thump noise outside.

My wife asked, "What was that?"

"A squirrel running on the roof?", I said.

She didn't buy that. I went outside in my bare feet with my socks and shoes and sat at the patio table to put them on - it was a nice morning, and that gave me a chance to enjoy the morning outside before commuting to work, if even for a minute.

As I pulled out a chair, and as I looked up to my left above the kitchen window, there was a Black Vulture perched on the retractable awning. A magnificent creature (1), the largest bird to-date we have seen in our yard. I was so close, I could see the rows of wrinkles and small feathers around its head, while it sat still and hunched slightly over at its neck above the shoulders. I called for Jan to bring my camera, "...and hurry."

She came to the door, and as I said there was a vulture sitting on the awning, she reached out with only her arm to hand me the camera. She shuttered and made the point she wasn't going to come outside.

"Is it here to eat the little bunnies?" (2)

"No, it only eats carrion."

"What does that mean?"

"Only dead things."

"I'm not coming out there."

I took a few shots, and then changed the camera setting to video and walked slowly toward the bird - it had flown to the fence between our and John's yards. As I got closer, it flew down into the next-door yard, up to the neighbor's fence, and then away.

That was that, and Jan still didn't want to come outside until I assured her it was gone.

"Check the trash, it is in the street."

For sure, black vultures don't eat live animals - they will frequent road-killed carcasses. But now I have documented proof that they are suburban dumpster divers as well, or at least will tear into a plastic garbage bag left out on Thursday night for Friday pickup by the Annapolis waste collection crew.

The bag had been dragged out into the middle of the street and torn open. I was pretty sure the expired fluorescent light bulb was not the target, or various other kinds of trash. Chicken drumstick bones - yes, those were the most likely target - scraps from the the night-before's meal - extradited from the bag and scattered on the pavement.

As I was crouched down and lining up the right angle to take a picture documenting my discovery, my neighbor Raffi from across the street was walking his dog (3) and asked, "What happened?"

"A black vulture got into the trash," I said matter of factually as I stood up after snapping the shot while putting the camera in my pocket.

"So what do you do?", expecting a reply that had to do with reporting the incident to the Environmental Protection Agency, or maybe even the home owners' association.

"Pick up the trash," I said, as I opened a new trash bag and began cleaning up the mess.

Fifteen minutes later I was at the wheel, dialing my appointment on the cell phone, and on my way.
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Not So Dark Vulture

The depiction of a vulture imitation by Snoopy in the Charles Schultz comic Peanuts is probably the only time one can be consider a vulture "cute." It is no wonder my wife wanted nothing to do with the specimen in our backyard. Interestingly, the bird returned this morning after I left, and was drinking water out of a bird bath bowl on the ground between the awning above the kitchen window, and the fence mentioned earlier. She reported she tried to get a photo for me, and seemed pretty proud of having tried. Maybe if the vulture becomes a regular visitor to our yard like the other birds we know, my wife will become more endeared to our very dark-colored-large friend, much like she is to our American Goldfinches and Northern Cardinals - the most yellow and most red birds in the universe.
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(1) There are a few things in natural history that have deeply made me sad when when I realized what had changed. The first time was about 10 years ago when I saw stands of native grasses and other vegetation in a Yolo County Resource Conservation District restoration project in the Sacramento Valley - I had read about and collected specimens of California native grasses as a teaching assistant, but had never seen anything like this relic of the past, knowing that 250 years earlier these were the norm; the second was when reading The Eternal Frontier three years ago that some woolly mammoth may have lived until 4,000 years ago; and the last time when reading a biography about the plant explorer David Douglas, that he observed California Condor when traveling the Columbia River. Thinking about what has changed could make me sad if I sat still long enough to think about it - the lyrics and music of Neil Young's Natural Beauty - haunting sounds in my ears.

(2) See yesterday's blog. Our backyard and entire neighborhood is full of little cotton tail rabbits. There are about as many of them around, as there are fireflies at dusk - well, not quite as many.

(3) The dog's name is Camden, like the name of the Baltimore Oriole's ball park at Camden Yards.