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| Turkey Vulture |
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| Sharp-shinned Hawk attacking the owl decoy |
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| Sharpie |
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| Sharpie |
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| Cooper's Hawk |
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| American Kestrel |
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| American Kestrel |
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| Hawk Watchers count a kettle over the Connecticut River Valley |
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| A small kettle of "broadies" - 20 birds ride the thermal up |
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| Broad-winged Hawk |
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| Broad-winged Hawk |
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| Broad-winged Hawk |
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| Bald Eagle |
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| Turkey Vulture |
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| Broad-winged Hawk - juvenile |
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| Broad-winged Hawk - juvenile |
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| Broad-winged Hawk - adult |
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| Broad-winged Hawk - adult |
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| Bald Eagle - adult |
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| Bald Eagle (2nd year) |
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| Turkey Vulture - juvenile |
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| Blue Jay |
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| Turkey Vulture - in N.A. often called a buzzard. |
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| Turkey Vultures have an acute sense of smell. |
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| Red-shouldered Hawk is a soaring hawk (buteo). |
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| The Red-tailed Hawk prefers a “sit and strike” method of hunting - unexciting to a falconer. |
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| The bald head of the Turkey Vulture is an adaptation to feeding on carrion. |
Vermont's true snowbirds are returning - not the two legged kind that head to Florida for the winter - but the Dark-eyed Juncos that shift south, or down-slope, and stay around for the winter months. Now they stand out against the bright fall colors ...
The hawk watch/photographic highlight was the young Cooper's Hawk which made several sweeping attacks at the plastic owl we put on a tree top ...
Red-tailed Hawks are beginning to move southward, though often hunting along the way. This one kited to the west, then drifted north, and finally went south with dispatch ...
Likewise, the Turkey Vultures are beginning to move. A few drift northward for a while, but most are moving south, including this young one ...
And finally ... there were many Canada Geese flocks (20-70 birds at a time) on the move, often close enough to look for the smaller Cackling that might be mixed in. No Snow Geese yet. This flock never organized itself into the familiar V formation, but moved with seeming randomness from the Connecticut valley to the West River Valley ...
Good birding!
Flatlanders are people living in Vermont who are not native to Vermont, but came from someplace else - the flat lands. The flat lands are presumably a region such as the Connecticut River Valley as it runs south through Massachusetts and Connecticut - or New Jersey, or Long Island. A person not born in the Green Mountain State (emphasis on the “mountain”) is a flatlander. It doesn’t really matter if the place a flatlander comes from is actually flat, just as long as it is not Vermont with its Ethan-Allen-Green-Mountain-boys heritage. There may be exceptions allowed for the New Hampshire native who moves from the White Mountains to the Green Mountains, or the New Yorker who moves from the Adirondacks to the Green Mountains, but that’s about it. All others are flatlanders. You grew up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and moved to Vermont; you are a flatlander. You moved to Vermont from a Swiss chalet in the Alps; you are a flatlander. You came from the Tibetan Himalayas where your entire life was lived about 15,000 feet - more than four times the highest elevation anywhere in Vermont. Then you moved to Vermont. You are a flatlander.The opposite of a flatlander is a woodchuck, a term that is applied, often with negative connotations, to a native born Vermonter.
In a recent gathering, a friend said that he had been born in Vermont. “So you are a woodchuck,” I replied. “No,” he said, “I am a Vermonter!” Growing up he never heard the term woodchuck. He opined that when the native Vermonters started complaining about all the changes caused by the flatlanders moving into the state, the flatlanders retaliated with the term, “woodchuck.”
With this discussion of flatlanders and woodchucks, I am probably wading into a mucky bottomed beaver pond. It’s time to get out. If you need more information about “woodchuck” and “flatlanders,”, try The Vermont Owner’s Manual by Frank Bryan and Bill Marers. For now let’s just leave it that generally speaking, flatlanders are usually from someplace to the south of the Vermont border.
In addition to the two legged flatlanders that have moved north to Vermont, there are a lot of feathered flatlanders that have also moved north.
Last week I wrote about the Black Vulture, the most recent southern species to begin making regular appearances in the mountainous realms of Vermont. Primarily a bird of the southeast, it has been following its cousin, the Turkey Vulture, northward. Historically, the Turkey Vulture was accidental in Vermont and only occasional in New England. Since the mid-twentieth century, it has increased dramatically. The TV is now commonly seen soaring over lakes, fields, and ridges from early Spring through late Fall. Direct evidence of breeding vultures is difficult to obtain, but there is lots of indirect evidence that Turkey Vultures are resident breeders, and it appears that the Black Vultures will soon join them.
Two weeks ago I wrote about the Red-bellied Woodpecker, a feathered flatlander. Also from the Southeast, the Red-bellied has firmly established its residential status since its first breeding record in 2001.
In March, I wrote two columns on the Mallard. Historically, the common dabbling duck in the Northeast was the American Black Duck. Audubon knew the Mallard from the interior states, but not from New England. As recently as 1933, a Vermont bird list called the Mallard a “rare summer resident” and “not common.” Fifty years later when the first Vermont Breeding Bird Atlas was compiled, the Mallard was described as the “most well-known of all wild waterfowl” and the “commonest duck in western Vermont.”
Canada Geese used to be known in Vermont as a migratory species going to and from breeding grounds in the arctic tundra. Many of the arctic birds still pass through, but many more have become feathered flatlanders. Thirty years ago there were only a few places in Vermont where Canada Geese nested. Today they have an abundant breeding population. Several nesting pairs are already incubating around the Retreat Meadows.
But let’s talk about the songbirds. Around those brushy edges of the Retreat Meadows, one of the first songbirds to burst into full-throated splendor has been singing for at least three weeks. He is a feathered flatlander: the Northern Mockingbird.
One of the earliest songbirds to begin greeting the Spring is yet another feathered flatlander: the Tufted Titmouse. A warm day in January may elicit song from the titmouse, and by the time the days are becoming noticeably longer, he is at it with enthusiasm, celebrating the impending life of springtime. His expectation of Spring is frequently premature, which might prompt a real Vermonter to mutter, “lander” (as in flat), meaning that the titmouse obviously is from someplace else and doesn’t know that winter isn’t over, for certain, until the corn finally comes up, and even then it can be dicey in some places.
Most of the feathered natives are not much for singing: the nuthatch (terse anks), the chickadee (wordy for a Vermonter but native nontheless), the creeper and junco (thin little buzzes & clicks). Feathered flatlanders, by contrast, have brought some real musical abilities to the Vermont landscape. In addition to the mockingbird and titmouse, the Northern Cardinal has moved north from its home in the south, and sings with a whistled enthusiasm that can thaw even the winter-frozen heart of a real Vermonter. And what a splash of brilliant color he adds to the winter landscape. A red cardinal perched on a green, but snow covered branch of a white pine is capable of prompting even the real-est of real Vermonters to admit, grudgingly, that “Some of them landers is okay.”
I know a couple of real Vermonters who are so real that their ancestors came to Vermont on the heels of the great land grabber and speculator, Ethan Allen; their great-great whatever may have been one of the first to buy Ethan’s sales pitch. But oh do they get excited about the Carolina Wren when it comes to the feeder, and especially when he limbers his cords and rivals the cardinal in his song. Then the real Vermonter can barely contain his love for the flatlander.
I said this to a real Vermonter one time. “You love the cardinal and wren, and they’re flatlanders. How come you don’t love me?”
“You can’t sing!” I tried mumbling my other virtues and contributions, but he cut me off. “Nuff said.”
Point is: some of the most common and/or familiar birds in the current Vermont landscape, are relative newcomers. There are various reasons why they have extended their range to the Vermont mountains, and for good cause we should worry about some of those reasons. But these feathered flatlanders brighten the landscape and enrich the airwaves. They contribute to Vermont being a special place ... as do most of us other two-legged flatlanders ... most of the time.
Good birding!
Mid-morning I was driving north on Putney Road. Two black birds flapped over the road ahead of me. The regular flapping at first said crows, but they were too big to be crows. The big black size said Turkey Vultures, but Turkey Vultures flap their wings rather slowly as they try to get far enough aloft to catch the thermals. These two birds were flapping hard, but awkwardly with quick choppy wingbeats. It looked as though they were struggling to gain altitude, indeed struggling just to fly. The broad wings tried to lift the stumpy bodies with a head, but barely any suggestion of a tail. Finally my mental synapses fired: Black Vulture.The drivers seat of a vehicle on Putney Road is a precarious place for birdwatching. Most people driving that road are in a hurry to get somewhere. What with radios, cell phones, mental shopping lists, and a determination to get wherever as soon as possible, there is little patience for the distracted bird watcher in the car ahead. But Putney Road is lined with a couple of miles of parking lots and lots of places to access those parking lots. I made a right hand u-turn into one, grabbed by binoculars from the passenger’s seat and got out to check the awkward flaps of the big black birds. They were, indeed, Black Vultures.
Black Vultures have been reported sporadically in the Spring and Fall for the last few years. Most of the Vermont sightings have come from the lower Connecticut River Valley, principally around Brattleboro. In 2007 the first Black Vulture was reported by the Putney Mountain Hawk Watch.
The Black Vulture is a bird of the southeast. In recent decades, it has been slowly extending its range northward along the coastal states. By the mid-1990s, I saw it regularly around my home in eastern Pennsylvania. Though hardly common, it was not unexpected. Turkey Vultures roosted in pines across from my home during the Spring and Fall; the roost often included a Black Vulture.
Black Vultures have been moving up the Connecticut River Valley. Their regular presence in Vermont has been predicted as the erratic sightings have become more frequent from year to year.
This Spring, Black Vulture reports have been coming from many places in the state, and not just one or two birds, but as many as six. The predictions are being confirmed.
The Black Vulture is a close relative of the Turkey Vulture. These New World vultures were once classified with hawks, as were the Old World vultures. The Old World vultures are still hawks, but a few years ago, the taxonomists reconsidered the New World vultures. They concluded that the New World vultures were really short-legged storks.
More recently, the taxonomists have concluded that the New World Vultures are unrelated to storks and should have their own family classification. The official story is that DNA studies compel separating the vultures from the storks, as well as from the hawks. But I suspect that the official story and the real story are different. I think the real story is that the storks were offended at being related to anything as ugly as the Black Vulture and the Turkey Vulture and lobbied for the reclassification.
The Turkey Vulture has a small, featherless red head. Only the most aesthetically impaired could consider this bird to be cute, attractive, or beautiful. It is not. However, the Turkey Vulture does have redeeming features. It is a master of the air and wind. It may flap its long, broad wings when it first takes flight and until it finds the rising air currents, but once it finds those currents, it soars effortlessly, tipping and bobbing and circling. The Turkey Vulture has an acute sense of smell; it can pick a molecule or two out of the atmosphere and follow that scent for dozens of miles to the carrion on which it feeds.
The Black Vulture has a bigger, dark gray, wrinkled head. Its stubby tale looks like it was lopped off with garden shears. Where the Turkey Vulture has grayish white on the back underside of its wing, on the Black Vulture the grayish white is on the end of the wings. Its splayed primaries are spikey, as though the spikey top-knot of some gothic teen were relocated to the extremities.
The Black Vulture forages by sight; historically it has been more a bird of open areas than the Turkey Vulture. But in forested areas, such as its newer territory in Vermont, it often flies with the Turkey Vulture, taking advantage of the latter’s keen smell to find the carrion. Where the Turkey Vulture seems to prefer fresh meat, the Black Vulture prefers to wait until its meat has ripened and the decaying mass has become insufferably odorous.
The Black Vulture also has the unendearing practice of not always waiting until its carrion is, in fact, carrion. Just because something hasn’t quite died is no reason, in the Black Vulture’s mind, why it should not begin feeding.
When Black Vultures joined Turkey Vultures in my old Pennsylvania neighborhood, a neighbor was very concerned. She had two old Labrador retrievers who spent most of the day asleep in the middle of the yard, their only movement coming from barely perceptible breathing. Even the call for dinner brought a desultory response, a slow lifting of head, raising of ancient body, and shuffle toward the door. My neighbor worried that the Black Vultures would, in her mind (not the vultures), make a very serious presumption. I have not found confirmation of this tendency among my resources, but those resources do cite the destruction caused by Black Vultures raiding the rookeries of herons and ibises.
The ugly feather-less heads of the vultures are an adaptation to their feeding style. They often stick their heads inside a carcass. Feathers would be a nuisance ; feathers would get gunked up foul fluids and rancid bits of meat, and would be impossible to keep clean. Hence, these large, avian refuse cleaners and protein recyclers have no feathers on their heads. But, as to their eating dead things - well, so do crows, ravens, owls, hawks, eagles, coyotes, and bears, not to mention many insects, grubs, and so on. 
For that matter, I occasionally dine on a juicy piece of meat from a dead bovine.
Vermont birders have been waiting with anticipation for the arrival of the Black Vulture in our state. I haven’t much shared that excitement. I wonder and worry about why they are moving northward: More garbage? More climate warming? More of some change (or mess) made by humans?
Anyway ... look more closely at those big black birds circling overhead. Look for a slight dihedral in the wings, a head but almost no tail, and gray-white at the end of the wings ... you’ll be looking at the newest vulture in the neighborhood.
Good birding.
The Turkey Vulture is not one of my favorite birds. Like most people, I prefer the cuteness of the chickadee or titmouse, the comic antics of the nuthatch, the gaudiness of the Wood Duck or Harlequin, the majesty of the Bald Eagle, the power of the stooping Peregrine, the ethereal song of the thrushes, or the sheer endurance and metabolic efficiency of a long distant migrant, like the Blackpoll. The Blackpoll burns fat reserves in its one ounce body during a 2000 mile journey across open ocean at the equivalent rate of an automobile which would get 750,000 miles per gallon.
Nevertheless, the Turkey Vulture is a much maligned bird, and the victim of what can only be called ignorant and irrational prejudice (if you will excuse the unnecessary and redundant adjectives).
First, some background. The Turkey Vulture is a relatively new arrival in New England. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Audubon knew of the bird in New Jersey, but did not know anyone who had observed it in New York. The same was true in Massachusetts and Maine. “On my later northern journeys,” he wrote, “I nowhere saw it. A very few remain and spend the winter in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where I have seen them only during summer, and where they breed. As we proceed farther south, they become more and more abundant.” In the early twentieth century, Forbush had occasional reports of the Turkey Vulture in New England. Today they are widespread throughout Vermont. Locally. thirty to fifty birds congregate around the Retreat Meadows in Brattleboro from Spring through Fall. In winter, they can be found in southern Connecticut. Although increasingly common in our neighborhood, I know no one who waxes eloquent about their presence.
Occasionally in our history, Turkey Vultures have been protected. In Charleston, South Carolina, Turkey Vultures were relied upon to clean up the offal and waste of the local slaughterhouses. It was a criminal offense to harm one of the birds, and the city officials rigorously enforced the law.
Such is not the case today. Today there is seldom much love expressed toward the Turkey Vulture. Much of the prejudice toward the Turkey Vulture is attributable to its diet - it feeds on carrion. Its diet is often referred to by such terms as filthy, foul, and malodorous. It is a scavenger, gathering where animal waste, scraps and garbage have been discarded.
But why should that be a cause for prejudice and distaste? Lots of birds do the same. Have you never seen crows feeding on a road killed squirrel, chipmunk, or opossum? Gulls are notorious scavengers. Some birders spend hours at town dumps, studying the feeding gulls in search of a rare species, while the gulls pick through the foul-smelling tons of human generated garbage.
A few years ago there was great excitement when an adult Bald Eagle was spotted on the ice in the West River. Traffic along Route 30 was slowed, even stopped, by people trying to get a look at the eagle. The eagle was feeding on a dead deer. Would the same kind of excitement be generated during the summer by vultures feeding on a deer carcass along the river bank? Perhaps if there was a Black Vulture among Turkey Vultures, it might attract the interest of some serious birders. The Black Vulture, a native of our Southeast, is extending its range northward. It is starting to show up in Vermont in the early Spring and mid-Fall. Birders will take notice of a Black Vulture. But the general public? They’ll only be annoyed at having to slow down.
Ah, someone says, the Turkey Vulture is disgusting because it feeds on disgusting, rancid, rotting flesh. If you think that, please read on.
John James Audubon (1785-1851) is synonymous with birds in America. He was a brilliant artist, an inveterate traveler, and a self-promoted frontier woodsman who sported long hair and fir-trimmed buckskins. He was also a superb naturalist with an abiding curiosity. Among the questions he asked was how does the Turkey Vulture find the carrion on which it feeds? By sight? Or smell? To answer the question, he first created a dummy deer carcass filled with straw and laid it in the open. Before long, Turkey Vultures appeared. That answered part of the question. Next he took a hog carcass and hid it under brush in a ravine. Vultures flew overhead but never came down to investigate or feed. Ergo, Turkey Vultures rely on sight, not smell. The authority had spoken.
Unfortunately, Audubon was wrong on two counts. He was wrong in his methodology, and as a result, wrong in his conclusion. In the 1960s, Audubon’s experiment was repeated with a carcass concealed in a box. A small fan blew gently across the carcass. Turkey Vultures soon gathered from many directions downwind and circled the area.
What had Audubon done wrong? The answer did not become clear until further experiments were conducted in the 1980s. Apparently Audubon had used a truly stinking, rotten carcass, presumably reasoning that what he would find odorously offensive would be appealing to Turkey Vultures. Not so. Turkey Vultures like their food properly aged - about one to four days. The Turkey Vultures could smell Audubon’s carcass, but it had the same appeal to them as it would have had to Audubon. None at all. It is now known that Turkey Vultures have a very acute sense of smell. A few straying molecules, often many miles from a carcass, can be detected by Turkey Vultures and lead them to their meal.
Turkey Vultures are one of the few birds which have a good sense of smell. Even their cousins, the Black Vultures, do not have a sense of smell. Black Vultures often travel with Turkey Vultures in order to take advantage of the latter’s ability to smell food. The Blacks follow the TVs to the food source.
So, why is there this prejudice toward the Turkey Vulture? Yes, it eats dead meat, but it is particular about its meat being properly aged, just as I am particular about my dead meat being properly cooked. Most humans eat carrion, though we don’t call it that, and, since we lack the proper beak for the job, we have a butcher cut it up for us. We may have prejudice toward some humans, but except for the odd misanthrope, we are not prejudiced toward all humans. I don’t have an answer for this prejudice toward the vulture, any more than I have an answer for prejudice toward other people - except that all the evidence I seem able to garner suggests that prejudice - avian or human - is ignorance. Which, as a basis for an opinion, is stupid!
Good Birding!
