What Beautiful Birds!

As you may know, we are backyard birders. However, the girls spotted these two lovelies on the roof of our neighbor's house this morning. I snapped a few photos, and then did a bit of research. (Gotta love Wikipedia!) We thought they might be turkey vultures, which we'd seen at a birds of prey show at Callaway Gardens last year. We were correct. A bit more research yielded that they are specifically Eastern Turkey Vultures (C. a. septentrionalis, in case you were wondering).



One of them adopted this spread-winged stance (see his shadow in the photo below?), which, according to Wikipedia is quite common: "The stance is believed to serve multiple functions: drying the wings, warming the body, and baking off bacteria."

We learned a lot about turkey vultures and the crucial role they play in our ecosystem. I'm glad they're on the planet! But I'm also glad they don't visit my feeders.