Change is Coming

Yesterday I drove to Nashville. I spotted black birds, returning migrants in large flocks. Over a field adjacent to I-565 I saw something that made my heart jump a little. Harriers coursing low over the grassy field; wings held up in the characteristic V, slipping silently and gracefully over the grass. These birds that are absent all summer have returned to Alabama their winter ground. Autumn seems to migrate in with them slipping into the slipstream of these magnificent birds drafting them all the way south. Fall will be here soon!!!

If the Harriers were not enough evidence of autumn's impending arrival, lower Tennessee had more than its usual amazingly large population of vultures; they too have returned for winter. A few years ago I saw a this magnificent display of vultures en masse. They were using a tree near I-65 as a communal roost just up the road a bit from the Booby Bungalow (a well known land mark that's name is self-explanatory). I'm not sure if there was a causal link of the roost's proximity to the Bungalow, but it is amusing to think of...a bunch of rolled patrons, drunk and unconscious lying passed out in a ditch with the vultures just waiting and hoping!

© Pam Croom 2008