About a week earlier, Don, bless his heart, had hit the wall about the squirrels that were taking over our bird feeder. It's squirrel hunting season here, and Don's a hunter, so I'll let you fill in the blanks. Having eaten his share of squirrels in his youth from necessity, and not from love of the meat, Don opted to donate these to our local clean up crew, the vultures. For a while, every morning, one squirrel was disappearing from the feeder and appearing, belly up, on a tall stump out from the kitchen. The vultures were efficient at disposal.
But now there had been a two day absence of squirrel meat, and the vulture at the window seemed to be asking politely,
"Did you forget something?"
The next day, and for some time since then, there have been two Black Vultures here regularly.
They are a lot like pets, in that they expect to be fed.
Unlike Turkey Vultures, Black Vultures are almost handsome, with their amour-like head gear and white stockings.
They perch on our deck...
preen themselves...
drink from the birdbath...
lounge on the stump where the squirrels have appeared...
stretch, and generally make themselves comfortable.
One of them even tried to take a bite of our door mat.
It may have been a ploy for sympathy, as in "See how hungry I am?"
Of course, with all this activity, squirrels are not coming around as much. The vultures haven't seemed to figure out that their frequent presence is contrary to their interests. So, until they do, we'll enjoy the entertainment. Soon enough, they'll get hungry and find it necessary to return to their regular day jobs--policing this area's highways, county roads, farms and woodlands for opportunities to put on their bibs and get back to work.
