On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:41:27 -0400, Tom Francis - SWSports wrote:

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:52:20 -0500, thunder
wrote:

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:56:36 -0400, Tom Francis - SWSports wrote:

In thirty years, I have never seen this happen before.

http://www.swsports.org/images/Pictu...zzards%20I.jpg

http://www.swsports.org/images/Pictu...zards%20II.jpg

Nine black buzzards on the main house and another six on the guest
house and an additional eleven in the trees - that picture didn't come
out that well.

26 black buzzards in one place at the same time.

Must be global warming. :)

While I've never seen them on my house, it's not that unusual to see
them roosting together, especially at this time of year. They are
gregarious when roosting, and are starting their southern migration.
They look like Turkey Vultures, but there is a slight chance they are
Black Vultures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Vulture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Black_Vulture

I wasn't sure myself to be totally honest, but I looked at my field
guide.

Definetly a black vulture. I called the orthano...oritha....orathe...
the bird dude at the local Audubon Society and sent him the pictures -
black vultures. He was surprized to seem that many of them this far
north of New Jersey - normally, according to him anyway, you seldom see
them north of Long Island Sound - almost always in ones and twos.

Yeah, that's why I was saying a "slight chance" of being Black Vultures.
They are expanding northward, but I've never seen a group that large.
Most of the vultures you will see, are Turkey Vultures.

Under learn something new everyday, I found out that they are active
hunters for small game, birds and such. Didn't know that.

Vultures also have a well developed sense of smell that they use for
locating carrion. They also use urohydrosis. I'll let you look that
up. ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urohydrosis