A huge thank you to the Mauch Chunk Environmental Center for their knowledge and assistance this morning. Apparently our coal corridor of Pennsylvania now has both Black Vultures along with Turkey Buzzards as permanent residents. It seems they are co-habitating in local caves and old coal mines, using the black earth as heating blankets to keep warm all year long. I found out about this as this morning I heard what I thought was a clumsy deer tripping through the undergrowth (we have a local doe missing a back foot) but suddenly realized something was very, very wrong as all the local birds were suddenly quiet (that is much more unnerving than you would think when you are used to them as constant background noise) I look out the bedroom window to see what I thought was a huge hawk glide over the apple tree and wondered why it was flying so low. Then another one joined it. Then they landed. JFC they were black, stood about 2.5 to 3 feet from tail to shoulder and had bald heads and necks. That clumsy deer I thought I heard was actually the sound of tree limbs breaking under their weight. Apparently there were two others close to them who took flight a couple of minutes after the first two landed. Even more concerning to me, they dont appear to be shy around humans. But the man at the Environmental Center explained that they would have to be BEYOND desperate to attack/kill anything and they are clumsy as all get out on the ground. Their feet/talons are not meant for grasping the way a hawks are and that the only dangerous part on them is their beak. Oddly, it seems the East end of my town, where I happen to live, is where they congregate apparently because we are more rural and moderately to heavily wooded.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 14:22:44 +0000
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