This is so creepy!!!

Warning: if you don't like vultures, don't scroll down!
I live about half a mile from a river, and we have a ton of vultures and hawks that live nearby. They are often seen circling around our heads when we leave the house. Last February, they took up residence in the trees right outside my bedroom window! I thought it was so weird, but they soon went to hang out in other places. Well imagine my surprise when I saw Bowser all puffed up by the window today, only to find out he was staring at a group of 12 vultures!! You never know how huge these things are until they're nearby. They were flying overhead within 5 feet of my window and it scared the heck out of me. They had to have at least a 6 foot wingspan!

Bowser and I were in awe and ended up sitting by the window for 2 hours just staring at them. I took a few pictures today, but they're a bit washed out because the screen got in the way.


They were actually about 15-20 feet away from my window, but I was using my telemacro lens to get these photos.





These two are from last year. We have a mix of turkey vultures and black vultures that hang out together.



This one scares me so much... he was staring right at me!!

AimerLee said:

This one scares me so much... he was staring right at me!!

Click to expand...

Wow! Amazing! I'm completely in awe too!

Lucky Bowser to have real live kitty TV, even though the birds were bigger than he is!  hehe

The one I showed above looks like he's eyeing you for his next meal, hehe

Do you ever put food out for them? Not sure what they would eat, but I'm venturing a guess that raw meat would be their choice of cuisine   I'd probably be out there feeding them!  Ok, well, not staying out there while they eat, probably more like throwing it out the window while driving by!  lol

Are you my neighbor!?   We get them all the time too!  The other day DD and I were in the back yard and a big group of at least a dozen flew over!  I went and stood next to DD!!  The way they circle makes me nervous!  Sometimes even when I'm inside I'll catch the shadows of them crossing the yard!  A few weeks ago I was driving home and just about one street over they were circling around a neighbor's dog!  They have a very open yard; no trees to speak of with farm fields all around.  The dog was just standing there minding his own business.  He was a medium sized dog; so no little thing.  It made me wish for a way to scare them off!  I've never seen them bother local animals; but I didn't want a first either!    I know they do good things for us; like taking care of roadkill and what not...but they are NOT my favorite birds!  I even hear the little birds get all wound up when they start circling...  Like a bird version of a pack of wolves!! 

They're magnificent, but the bald heads are ugly. Seeing a slew of them hanging out around your house would be creepy. Sometimes we get humongous flocks of crows circling above the neighborhood, and it's downright eerie.

AFAIK, vultures don't kill live prey--they just eat pre-dead critters. It's the eagles that make me nervous for small pets. Bald Eagles are generally lazy but Golden Eagles will take cats and small dogs if given the chance. Great Horned Owls will, too, but they're out mainly at night. Hawks can take kittens but it seems rare from what I've heard.

A friend of mine lives right next to a municipal water tower. The vultures (we get Turkey Vultures; I've never seen an all-black one around here) hang out on that water tower all the time. He refers to them as the local Air Force :lol3:. Sometimes a few dozen of them perch themselves all over the tower.

Wow, I don't think I have ever seen one in real life!

I see them all the time.  They do a real favor for us, removing dead animals from the environment.  The bald heads are nature's way of making them more efficient at what they do best.

The big difference between the two is that turkey vulters (red head) hunt by smell, and black vultures hunt by sight.  In east Texas, it's not unusual to see a number of black vultures following a turkey vulture, waiting for him to find dinner for all of them.

There is a big radio tower out east of Fort Worth that has several hundred vultures on it every night.

Well, vultures were created by the same Supreme Being Who made us, and they do a very valuable service to us all as a janitorial squad, so I have nothing at all against them.  Nice photos!

Wow,I have never seen one close up,amazing photos.x

mrblanche said:

The big difference between the two is that turkey vulters (red head) hunt by smell, and black vultures hunt by sight.  In east Texas, it's not unusual to see a number of black vultures following a turkey vulture, waiting for him to find dinner for all of them.

Click to expand...

That's so neat! I never knew that! Right now there's a bunch of them perched on my roof, enjoying the 73 degree weather!

Natalie_ca said:

Wow! Amazing! I'm completely in awe too!

Lucky Bowser to have real live kitty TV, even though the birds were bigger than he is!  hehe

The one I showed above looks like he's eyeing you for his next meal, hehe

Do you ever put food out for them? Not sure what they would eat, but I'm venturing a guess that raw meat would be their choice of cuisine   I'd probably be out there feeding them!  Ok, well, not staying out there while they eat, probably more like throwing it out the window while driving by!  lol

Click to expand...

I actually took that picture the day before I had my gallbladder removed. I was so sick and having a vulture eyeing me all day wasn't helping! Lol!

And my boyfriend and I are vegetarian so we don't have any meat to throw back there, but I live in an apartment complex with about 10 other people facing the woods behind me. I'm wondering if any of my neighbors are leaving meat out because they're out here so much!
 

vultures are awesome...if not slightly gross lol. (throwing up and pooing on their feet<some species anyways)   I always love watching them at a bit of road kill along side the road. Especially if its the first few vultures there, they always spread their wings out over the kill and look around like they're saying, "Nothing to see here, move along. There's nothing to see here, nothing see here."   It makes me laugh each and everytime.

My family and I always use to go down to Table Rock Lake during the late summer (early august) We would always go tubing and my dad....well lets just say he did not fear trying to kill my sister and I on the tubes lol. Going 35+mph, playing "crack the whip", turning just in time to send our tubes into a group of ducks in the water.  His goal was to get us to wipe out in a epic fashion.  My sister and I would always laugh when we saw the vultures circling above us, it was light they were waiting for us lol

Am I the only one who thinks they are horridly ugly? Like I don't even want to look at the pictures. I don't know if we have them here, I hope we don't. That's one ugly mug. 

I really like turkey vultures, it's funny to see them up high in trees since they're so huge. We had a lot of them near me growing up in Michigan.

What's creepy is the TINY head on a huge body if the turkey vulture!

I think their heads look small because of the lack of feathers, not because they actually are disproportionately small. If you shaved your kitty's head, it would look pretty small!

They aren't here for a beauty pageant--they're here to eat rotting old dead things. I wouldn't expect a lot from their looks :lol3:.

I've never seen one up close. The pictures are really neat, but I'm happy we don't have any out here lol!!

Wow, your pictures are amazing! We have some raptors around here and we'll see them circling around something up in the fields behind the house. Sometimes something will be dead on the road in front of the house and some turkey vultures will show up to feed on the carcass. They are huge.

Draco said:

What's creepy is the TINY head on a huge body if the turkey vulture!

Click to expand...

Any bird without feathers on its head looks the same.

The problem vultures have is that they have the beak and digestive system to be a predator, but not the feet.  They literally have to wait until something stops moving.

Just nature's way of taking care of the cleanup.
 

Wow, great pictures! They make a very impressive kitty TV. We live close to some large trees and we'll often get large flocks of crows roosting. They always get the cats wound up.
We do have turkey vultures near here on the Niagara Escarpment, and maybe you'll see some above farmland too, but not in town.