Fun With Buzzards

In the Sierra valley where my mom lives, there are birds that return, like the swallows to Mission San Juan Capistrano, on the same day every year.

Only here it's buzzards. Big, dark, hulking, dead-thing-eating buzzards. NOT quite the same thing as cutesy, graceful swallows. But, we have some fun with the ones roosting in the large Cottonwood trees across the road from the house anyway. The kid lies down in the driveway, doing her best to look dead, bloated and yummy.

The buzzards, however, are unimpressed and there are no takers.

They do soar nicely against the evening sky, though. LOTS of them. When they come in for a landing in the Cottonwood trees, they do so with a resounding, stumbling crash and a shower of broken-off small branches.