The Dance of the Vultures

They started gathering last night, flying in low circles over the porch and the drainage swale between our house and Bart and Renee's fortress-like place next door. They are graceful in the air, and slightly ominous as Will spotted several more sitting hunched on the branches of the trees.

This morning we counted seven of them, some hidden by foliage, but these two were sitting prominently on top of a rather strange looking twisted tree branch. The backdrop of burned trees tended to add to the drama, or perhaps I should say potential drama, as they sat motionless for ages. They were unphased  and unmoving as I came out onto the porch, but finally one by one, they all began to come to life and spread their wings to catch the warming rays of the sun, eventually coming to life and taking off to resume their circling.

They were later joined by a yellow helicopter circling as low as 300 feet over the house, probably a PG&E one carrying lidar to check on line safety and ongoing tree work. It didn't phase the vultures either but I came back inside.

Back at ground level, we took Spike for a walk at Spring Lake where we met our neighbor Renee. She told us that Bart had walked up the gully and found a dead deer. The vultures and and other scavengers will have taken care of most of it and and the bones will be scattered within a week. 

We need to fill up our galvanized tub with water for them. There is still water in the creek but a lot of trees have fallen into it, making it both difficult to access and liable to flooding during the rainy season. Nobody seems to know who is responsible for cleaning out fallen trees and brush from Santa Rosa's many creeks.