Light Wings

“Light Wings”. Recently, we had an unfortunate incident where one of our local deer was hit by a car and killed. Of course, it wasn’t long before the vultures, both turkey vultures and black vultures, arrived to clean up. Vultures are incredible animals that are extremely well adapted to their job as nature’s clean up crew. They have always fascinated me, so I had to try to get some photos of them. It was a very overcast day and the light was terrible for taking photos of black birds, so most of what I shot was just silhouettes, but I did manage to get this shot as the sun peaked out from behind the clouds for just a couple of minutes. The bird, a turkey vulture, had its wings outstretched and they caught the sunlight beautifully (I did not enhance those colors). This is a common behavior for vultures, and they do it for a number of reasons including to dry their wings and to keep warm. The most important that they do it, though, is to let the sunlight and air kill any bacteria that they get on their feathers while feeding. I was very happy to capture such a pretty shot of one of these magnificent birds doing a very natural behavior.