27 February 2008

In the past six days I’ve been in Florida — looking at birds of course.

By the end of February I’ve had enough of Pittsburgh’s relentless gray skies and cold weather so I visit my friends Chuck and Joan Tague who spend the winter near Daytona.  Birds + friends + warmth are such a welcome break! 

Humans aren’t the only ones who escape to Florida.  A lot of birds spend the winter there, especially the turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) and black vultures (Coragyps atratus).

Turkey vultures are common in western Pennsylvania from March to November but they spend the winter in the south because they can’t eat frozen food.  Vultures eat rotting dead things, the more rotten the better.  Freezing weather preserves the meat – therefore no rotting – and vultures’ beaks are not strong enough to break apart tough substances, so they go south.

But if it’s possible to have favorites among such ugly birds, mine are the black vultures.  They are less shy than turkey vultures, they have timid-looking faces and they are rare in western Pennsylvania.  I suppose absence makes my heart grow fonder.  I don’t have to deal with them all the time.

Near Daytona there are two places where I’m guaranteed to see lots of black vultures:  Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge and at my hotel’s parking lot.  This has nothing to do with the hotel and everything to do with the fast food restaurants nearby.  The black vultures roost overnight on cell towers and pines and coast down to the restaurant dumpsters in the morning.  Sweet and shy as they look, I don’t get too close because they projectile-vomit when frightened. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that!

At Lake Woodruff I can get a little closer.  The vultures sit in flocks on the dikes and as we approach they hop away, sometimes holding their wings open and skipping ahead of us.  They look so silly that I had to imitate them. Chuck snapped my picture. 

Oh well.  You’re never too old to have fun.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

Since I was already near Harrisburg for a family Christmas celebration, I took the opportunity last Wednesday to visit the lower Susquehanna River with Scott Gregg and his daughter Karena, birding friends from Beaver Falls. Our goal was to see bald eagles.

Our main stop was Conowingo, a hydro-electric dam in Maryland and the last dam before Chesapeake Bay. The river was so high that the floodgates were open and sirens were wailing to warn boaters of the flood and turbulence. Spray rose from the dam’s waterfall and hundreds of gulls wheeled through the mist. Black vultures hunched on the dam and in nearby trees. Great-blue herons waited out the flood on a rocky downstream island.

We saw more than a dozen bald eagles but it was hard to count in the misty air. Some perched on the power towers, some circled above the electric lines. There were more immature eagles than adults. The immatures are mottled brown like a huge hawk without the white head and tail until their fourth or fifth year. Chuck Tague’s picture shows an adult eagle in Florida (that’s why the sky is blue!).

Bald eagles are in the genus of sea eagles. They always live near water and eat mostly fish. During the breeding season they claim a territory and keep other eagles away but in winter they congregate in large numbers where there is open water and lots of fish. The dams along the lower Susquehanna are just such a place.

Apparently the fishing was easy at Conowingo. With the river rushing through the floodgates, the fish were taking a beating. No wonder we saw so many gulls, black vultures … and bald eagles.