A feast of vultures

This column is about vultures, so if you are eating breakfast or the thought of these dedicated carrion feeders makes you squeamish, pass this column by.

- PETE DUNNE

While some find the birds loathsome, I consider Turkey Vulture handsome with their cadmium-colored heads, horn-colored bills and somber eyes. Katie Fallon, who just wrote a wonderful tribute to the birds, likens the contemplation of flying vultures to Zen. I quite agree. Moving through the air with the grace of thistle down, there are few birds that can match the aerial finesse of these condor-like birds, which, any day now, will come wobbling over the horizon, one of Maine's earliest harbingers of spring.

Once rare in Maine, during the last half of the 20th century, the bird's range expanded northward. The expansion was propelled in part by climate change but also in response to burgeoning deer populations plus the nightly tribute of deer deposited along roadsides by speeding cars along interstate highways. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so, too, does she decry food going to waste. As carrion feeders, a surfeit of dead deer constitute a resource not to be overlooked by vultures (or coyotes). This new wealth of carrion has even prompted some vultures to remain in Maine all winter. It's not the cold that daunted the bird but reduced foraging time in December and January that made staying in Maine risky.