I took a walk in the woods yesterday. Up at the Scenic Overlook, there was a strange sound, raspy, like something being scraped over and over again. I wanted know what it was, so I crept closer, expecting to find human beings working on something, though I couldn’t imagine what. Suddenly several large birds burst out of the brush. One of them perched in a tree for a moment before joining its cronies in the sky. I managed to capture a picture of it.
The bird in the photo looks like a vulture, but not a turkey vulture (its head isn’t red), so it must be a black vulture. Both types live in Rhode Island, as I’ve since learned. But, there were four birds total, and I’m pretty sure that one of them was a turkey vulture.
Apparently the two types are often found together. Black vultures, which depend on sight for finding food, sometimes follow turkey vultures around, because turkey vultures can locate food from miles away, just by smell. Black vultures are moochers.
I was curious about what the vultures had been up to before I startled them. Presumably they had found themselves something deliciously dead to nosh on. But they were circling overhead, waiting for me to leave, their shadows slicing across mine. I wasn’t sure I had the stomach for viewing half-eaten dead things anyway, so I decided not to investigate. However, I found many other interesting things in the woods that day, including a new wildflower. More posts to come soon.