I’ve never been super into birds. They kind of just exist. The chaotic energy grackles has grown on me quite a bit, but other than that I have given birds much thought. That is until I moved to San Marcos. I’ve become just a teensy bit obsessed with the vultures we have here. The ones you see most often are Black Vultures. In Texas we have both Black vultures (cute) and Turkey Vultures (ugly but in a cute way). If vultures were fashion students, Turkey Vultures would dress indie sleaze and Black vultures would dress mall goth.
Anyways. When the vultures are circling above campus and the square, they’re basically riding the air currents. When multiple vultures are doing this at once it’s called a kettle. Which is kinda silly and witchy. I think scientists knew what they were doing when they came up with that term. An article I read equated vultures circling to surfers waiting for a good wave. I thought that was interesting
Some more tidbits
Vultures don’t circle dead or dying things. That’d be a huge energy waste when they could just go fly over and check things out on the ground. Plus, the early bird gets the (dead) worm and life is a competition.
Black vultures hunt via sight. They have a very bad sense of smell (unlike turkey vultures). So sometimes when black vultures see a turkey vulture circling and smelling for food, they will fly slightly higher than them. When the Turkey vulture smells something and goes to investigate, the Black vulture will swoop in and steal the find. In that sense Black vultures are kind of assholes, but at least they’re cute.
This picture was from a few weeks ago when we had that big winter freeze. I was walking around campus and went up to Old Main for fun. I didn’t expect to see like a hundred vultures just hanging out. It was such a surreal moment, I’ve never seen that many together before and I really wish I took more photos. This one doesn’t do them justice. They were everywhere, on Old Main and hanging out in the trees nearby. I walked around the building and some of them took off. Their wings make this awesome ‘whooshing’ sound that’s super quiet but distinct.
The video is one I took last year, I was just so amazed by how many there were. Just hanging out above campus.
The vultures add a weird and magical flavor to San Marcos. Their presence is unexpected but makes me feel like I’m in a Tim Burton movie whenever I see them. Of course grackles will always have a place in my heart, but I have to admit Black vultures are way cooler.
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