Bedraggled Birds Unlike Geese to Water

[HunterGKS]

It was kinda rainy, misty on the drive home from lunch today so I didn’t
expect to see any critters out & about. The Brokensword was high &
running pretty fast so no ducks or geese. I got to the corner of Bethel
& Wickham & spotted this wet hen. She would shake a little & eventually
jumped up on a log, stretched out, & headed into the woods.

I turned right onto Wickham & saw 7 geese on the edge of a pond where I
always see a pair with gosling. They didn’t seem to mind the rain whatsoever.

I got on SR100 where 4 turkey vultures, just into a field, where they had been
feeding on a coon. They didn’t seem overjoyed at being wet either. Then again,
how can you tell with a vulture?

Spring must be right around the corner as the vultures are coming back, I saw a
pair of robins outside the fitness center this morning, & heard a killdeer by my
creek Weds.

[Grumpy]

Good pictures, you always have something interesting.

[Swampstalk]

Always cool pictures! Funny you mentioned the vultures may be returning. They are like the rest of the snowbird tourists. We have thousands of them here in the greater Miami, FL area. Years ago the newspaper took a picture of the county courthouse with it's stepped pyramid type roof loaded with roosting vultures. The caption was something like "Two kinds of vultures hanging out at the courthouse". My understanding is that migrate from Henkley, Ohio where they nest I think.

During the past few years, after I retired, I worked for the FL Avocado Admin. Committee conducting aerial surveys via helicopter low over avocado orchards looking for diseased trees. The damn vultures roost in them and like avocados it seems. Must be Mexican vultures. Anyway, the pilot would go nuts having to dodge hundreds of them when it began warming up and they took flight. It's so bad that during that time a vulture went through the windshield of a police helicopter and he had an emergency landing on the turnpike when the bird came into the cockpit with him! Please keep them in Ohio!

We had a time doing surveys with the vultures, Pakistani Kamikaze foreign student pilots around us, and the skydivers (fondly called "meat missiles" by one pilot I had).

[HunterGKS]

I was stationed at MacDill, lived in Tampa & then Brandon from '69 to '04. The vultures were bad in downtown Tampa
roosting on the towers atop some of the buildings & the big AC units on some roofs. They were nasty with a capital CRAP!!!!

I camped in Green Swamp to turkey hunt & there were hundreds of them roosting in the trees near the campground. Too
many got on 1 limb breaking it & sending squawking vultures every which way. It was hilarious!!

[Hognutz]

Saw my first flock of turkey buzzards today. Still have some snow on the ground but it’s going fast.

[devastator]

Well shoot,i thought you killed a bird,ya tricked me into looking!!

[Swampstalk]

Vultures are so bad in Everglades National Park at Royal Palm Visitor Center that the park folks provide tarps to cover cars as the vultures seem to have an affinity for rubber window seals and windshield wiper blades.

[Mad_Baron]

This reminds me of when I turkey hunted in far NE Nebraska where Louis and Clark went up the river. There was a sign in the park that said the expedition had turkey for dinner and wrote is was terrible and vile tasting. Historians think they ate a vulture by mistake. A mistake you will only do once I imagine!

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[ylpnfol]

nice pics