“…as for every other man alive, all passes, all is lost, all melts before our grasp like smoke…youth is gone before we know it, and that, like every other man, we must grow old and die. —from Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe, 1935
“If you could do anything, what would you do?” asked ten-year-old Jaycie. “Fly,” I replied without hesitation. —A recent conversation between the author and his granddaughter
Against the cloudless sky, a big, dark bird soared effortlessly over our western Illinois town on the steady afternoon breeze. Black as a crow, but obviously much larger, with wings held at a shallow angle, the bird, at first, seemed to float aimlessly wherever the air currents meandered, unsteadily teetering like an unsure tightrope walker. But after watching for a time, I could see that it actually had a rather loose yet definite command of its direction and altitude. So without even using binoculars, I knew by its size, color, and distinctive flight pattern that this was a turkey vulture.
And instantly, as with every sighting of this species, I was pulled back in my mind’s eye to the 1970s. It was on a limestone cliff high above the Mississippi River and its vast bottomlands that I, as a young man, first saw a turkey vulture. Unaware of the bird’s presence perching on a nearby tree, I approached the cliff edge, just as the vulture jumped into the air and sailed away. I later described the bird to one of the staff at Mississippi Palisades State Park, who was not at all surprised, assuring me in my naïve enthusiasm that this was not a rare bird, and that they were actually quite common.
The described turkey vulture sighting over the Mississippi
River bottomlands in 1978.
All of the countless sightings I have made of this species over the next four and a half decades would be anchored to that day. Some, though, stand out from the many: from the hot, dry skies over the Southwest’s Sonoran Desert to Hawk Ridge over Lake Superior to Pennsylvania’s Little Grand Canyon, viewing the birds from above as they rode the valley’s contours over the Allegheny River. And at every closer observation, being quite taken by their graceful beauty, but at the same time repulsed by their bare skin heads lacking feathers—bare apparently to avoid having soiled feathers after intimate contact with carcasses.
The strangest and closest encounter was along the bluffs bordering the Illinois River’s floodplain when I sighted a turkey vulture far away over a field; it seemed to be pacing my vehicle along the bluff road in speed and direction, moving all the while closer and closer until…hitting my windshield full force, as if it were guided by a military-grade GPS to make a precise impact. Why didn’t this bird make even a minimal effort to shift its wings and tail feathers, thereby gaining the necessary altitude to avoid a fatal collision? This vulture seemed bound and determined to make a direct hit. But why? To what end other than its own demise on a cracked windshield?
While small birds seem always jittery and worried about life, and larger ones have a seriousness about them, kind of a calculated efficiency, turkey vultures exude a rather lackadaisical nature: light wing loading allows them to become aloft and soaring with only the slightest of air movements; they drift on the winds, rarely needing to flap their wings; and feed on the margins of the more respectable members of bird society that hunt live prey, glean livelihood from seeds and berries, or both. They can be a familiar sight on any back country road of the Midwest, feeding on a cornucopia of roadkill, even on lightly traveled routes; and when a vehicle approaches, they cumbersomely fly off in slow, wide arcs, eventually returning to feed—until the next vehicle appears, and then the cycle repeats. Annoying disturbances these must be, but part of the lifestyle they seem to accept with grace and patience, almost as if they know that everything must die, and all they need to do is to wait.
Turkey vultures routinely form night roosts on cell towers.
Photo by Vic Berardi posted by permission.
In fact, they seem to have adapted to the modern rural landscape very well. And it’s not difficult to imagine that road kills will continue to remain in steady supply for the foreseeable future. Still, their habitat, although simplified in its present agricultural setting compared to the pre-Columbian state, is really quite complex with known and unknown unpredictable factors. For now at least, though, life is good for a bird that searches for death.
So might a turkey vulture be considered the quintessential bird of death? These days, with my hazy self-image each year imperceptibly morphing closer to that of an “old man,” I find it difficult not to think of death as I observe a soaring vulture dispassionately looking down upon me, its dark plumage and demeanor suggestive of the great abyss: a profound nothingness, from my perspective, that existed before I was born and will exist after this life has finished its pitifully brief sojourn within the infinity of time and space. An afterlife I have not much considered, not being drawn to unscientific notions. Yet who am I to scoff when so many individuals wiser than I have embraced the concept? As for turkey vultures, I’ll be looking for and observing them until the very end. Now if I could only convince my wife to agree to dump my dead body into a remote field….
Reference
del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., and Sargatal, J., editors. 1994. Handbook of the birds of the world, volume 2. New World vultures to guineafowl. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.