Buzzard Tower

This tower is about four miles from our house and is the favored roosting place for the neigborhood buzzards. They fly over to the tower just before dark and settle in for the night. There were at least 100 of them on the tower when this picture was taken and probably more by dark.

They got a little startled when I walked over to the fence to take this picture and some of them flew off and landed back on the tower, as shown in the picture. Their wingspan is huge and you can hear the whoosh when they’re flapping. It’s quite a deal when a bunch of them are flying back to the roost and you can hear them flying overhead.

We see both the red-headed turkey vultures and the black vultures. The ones nesting here were the turkey vulture variety as indicated by their red head and white-pattern underneath the wings when they’re flying. They glide very gracefully and were studied by the Wright brothers when designing their first flyer.

There’s more info at the Turkey Vulture Society and Wikipedia.