On Vultures

Audubon's Turkey Vulture, Cathartes aura
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1.

It's spring, and the vultures are back.

Winter skies around here were characterized by bald eagles and red-tailed hawks, eagles by the water and hawks by field and trees, and of course the ubiquitous crow. The eagles high-tailed it out of here all at once when it started to warm up. The ranks of the hawks are diminished. Humble, homely, and massive, the turkey vulture with its gruesome red skull and vast silver-black wings will rule the sky by default between now and the first frost.

The crows seem puny by comparison.

2.

I work on the west side of town, the sprawl of suburban developments punctuated with open fields of yet-to-be-developed space and lined with gallery trees. In the winter, I can look out the window of my classroom to see hawks on the telephone line across the street. This time of year, I see vultures, right now as singularities, but later I'll see them in twos and threes. In the summer, on the highway between here and the outskirts of Kansas City, I will often see upwards of a dozen of them circling over the woods. I sometimes see a batch of them on the roof of a barn near my mom's house in Desoto, Kansas, huddled about in various states of disarray. By appearance, the vulture seems an untidy bird, its feathers always a little out of place, disheveled.

Like hawks, vultures appear to be expanding in number--either that or they are simply succumbing to the promise of greater amenities in the suburbs. Maybe they are just getting over their initial shyness around people--but that doesn't quite seem right because the vulture seems to be an entirely unselfconscious type of creature. A few years ago, I saw them only on the jagged edges of town, near open fields or woods. Twice already this year, I have seen vultures flying over my own neighborhood of Old West Lawrence, right in the middle of town.

On my way home from work, sometimes, I drive through their shadows. I crane my neck to the window following them. I've got to be more careful about this so that I don't end up on the menu anytime soon.

3.

A hawk in flight soars; it glides on currents of wind and climbs them. There is something sharper and tighter about a hawk's maneuvers than even those of an eagle. With its short, stout wings, the hawk works in a more confined space.

A vulture, in contrast to both, kites. It takes up vast amounts of sky. A vulture always looks a little flimsy despite its massiveness, its wings a little papery, blown about by the wind. The hawk seems always to be in control. The vulture seems always to be at the mercy of the skies, even though it is a much larger bird. If you've ever seen a novice skier lose control, careen too quickly down the slope, you've seen a vulture slide along with the wind, seemingly unable to brake.

Despite their reputation, I can't think of them as sinister. Bumbling, clumsy, graceless--but still, there's something about them that I like, something endearingly comic.

4.

The vulture is a mute species; it has no voice box. Unlike other birds, vultures compose no love songs; they communicate by huffing and wheezing. What cool means of seduction one vulture can offer another, I've no notion. Nor can I imagine what crises of self worth they must undergo now, listening to the spring birds with their gentle, intricate trills.

The vulture is generally gregarious, huddling with others of its kind in big bands in the tops of trees, splitting up into singles in mating season. Never altogether sad nor merry, that's how I imagine them most of the time.

Dutiful servants of nature, they've got a job to do, unglamorous but essential, like taking out the trash. Their literary equivalent is Prince Hamlet's gravedigger, and they serve a similar two-fold purpose: comic relief, disposal of the dead. Unlike other raptors, their eyesight is not so keen; they sense carrion by smell. Their talons don't have the vise-like gripping power that hunter birds possess. Vultures circle awkwardly, lazily, on updrafts until they scent something or until the wind batters them some other way. The green and verdant landscape opens up beneath them, for them, but they have no songs to sing in celebration of it.

Their heads are bare so that they can plunge them deep into the carcasses that others dare not devour.

5.

On the expansion theory, maybe the weather conditions have been good for them, or maybe there's less of a certain pollutant since the Farmland plant closed down on the other side of town. Maybe the stars are aligned, or maybe the moon or whatever goddess watches over them just said, go ahead.