Are they coming for me?

 

The birds circled high above, black wings outstretched, riding the currents above the White River, Arkansas in graceful circles. I watched in fascination and made a comment something like, “Aren’t they beautiful. What are they?”

Then, they decided to land in a nearby dead tree, and I got a close-up look at these creatures. With large flapping wings, they settled, one by one onto its upper branches and morphed from lovely to downright ugly. They were vultures.

I accepted this. After all, a vulture is not a pretty sight but has its part to play in nature’s grand scheme of things, and I continued to enjoy the sight of them flying so effortlessly high in the sky. These big flocks were a “southern” thing, common to Arkansas, or so I thought.

I’ve seen turkey buzzards in the north, feasting on road kill along Highway 61, but never a flock circling in the sky until several weeks ago, while sitting on the deck of the cabin in Canada.

I looked up to see a large bird overhead. Thinking it was an eagle, I turned to tell Dick just as he pointed up at another big black bird. And another and another. There they were, flying just above the forest canopy, a flock of vultures.

I’m not a superstitious person. In my opinion Yeti and Sasquatch don’t exist except as hoaxes, and I don’t believe that a four-leaf-clover brings good luck. However, once again seeing a flock of these carrion-eating birds made me a little uncomfortable. What was going on?

And what did I know about buzzards anyway? My only previous exposure has been in Hollywood westerns where buzzards were a bad thing. They circled over dead bodies. But that was Hollywood.

However I did think it slightly peculiar to see them where I never had before, in northern skies. I told myself not to be silly.

But the dang things followed me. Not long after seeing them at Lac, another flock circled over my back yard on Devil Track Lake. I swear. I was just sitting at the picnic table in my little back yard, minding my business when there they were, buzzards, high in the sky gyrating over my tomatoes and radishes. Making matters worse, they performed another a fly-over last weekend in Canada.

I don’t like this one bit.

I get no sympathy from my family. When I told a group of people about this strange occurrence, my smart-aleck son shrugged and said something like… “Well, you and Dad are getting old…”

This gave me the idea to go public. Are other people seeing buzzard flocks where they haven’t before or have these circling groups been around all the time, I never happened to see them? Is this something new or has my imagination gone wild?