Visitors were welcome surprise

“Go look out your window,” my neighbor lady told me when I answered the phone. She seldom calls me so I was a bit surprised when I realized who was on the line.

I pushed the curtains aside and called hubby to look, too. There were three big, black buzzards in the yard. A forth tried to join the group but the others chased it away. At first we thought the birds were turkeys, but a closer look revealed the bald, red heads of nature’s clean up crew.

They have a wingspan of 63 to 72 inches and weigh two to five pounds. Their bodies are about the size of a soccer ball. In comparison, I am 62.4 inches tall and am not the size of a soccer ball. I usually see the big birds in small groups lazily riding the thermal air currants. The ratio of their wing area to body weight is so high they can glide for hours with little effort.

Despite the cartoon of two buzzards talking and one saying, “Forget patience, I’m going to kill something,” the birds do not kill. They dine on dead things. An interesting fact I found was that their digestive system destroys viruses and bacteria. This can possibly prevent the spread of disease and perhaps even plagues. There is bound to be a scientist somewhere who is working on a way to use this information.

Every March the buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio. The Hinckley Reservation, which is part of Cleveland’s Metropark is perfect for the big birds. The 90-acre Hinckley Lake has rocky bluffs rising hundreds of feet above the water. Buzzards roost like chickens, and turkeys. The rocky ledges are an ideal habitat for them. Hinckley has a big party to celebrate their return.

A long time ago we were on vacation in Baton Rouge in Louisiana. We stopped at the welcome center where a delightful older lady was behind the counter. She told us about several attractions we should check out. I asked her about the big, black birds along the highway. She said they were turkey buzzards and the dead thing beside them was an armadillo. Then she told me a joke. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” I replied, “To show the opossum it could be done.” She laughed and said I was the only one who got that right, except that it wasn’t an opossum, but an armadillo.

The birds finally flew away. When we went to see what they had been eating, we found a very dead, very black, very flat squirrel. Neither of us knew how long it had been there.

Living this close to the river, we have had many wildlife visitors over the years. Currently, we have cats, rabbits, squirrels, assorted birds and probably things I don’t want to know about running through the yard. This is the first time we have seen buzzards in the grass.

So far they have not returned. I am always surprised at how many living things there are that call our property home. Some of them stop by for a snack now and then. Others use the yard as a shortcut to wherever they are headed. Still others wait until the garden is in its prime before stopping by for a snack.

Seeing the birds up close was interesting. They seemed to take more time to chase each other away than they did eating. I’m glad my neighbor called to tell me we had visitors on the lawn.