Mother and Child

I was finally able to get a photograph of the two buzzards in the barn (after borrowing a quality camera from my sister).

Sometimes I can identify which is the mother black vulture and which is the offspring, but I can’t in this picture. If I could see them moving around or flying, the awkward one is obviously the baby.

Return of the Bat

For nearly twenty years bats flew up the hollow every evening (except when hibernating) around dusk. A couple years ago I realized that I was no longer seeing them and this left me concerned about the spreading bat disease I had been reading about. Late Saturday night, however, I was driving up and out of the hollow when I was happy to see a few bats dipping down into my yellow headlights and grabbing insects before flitting to the darkness above. My hope for them has returned.

Buzzards in the Barn

Just like a year ago, a black vulture nested in our barn and raised a young one. Last summer, she had two babies. I was just watching the chick, who has finally lost all of his fuzzy white feathers and looks like an authentic buzzard instead of a weird muppet creature. It was sitting in the barn window looking around and then would suddenly swoop down inside the barn with wings spread. It would fly a circle and then land back in the open window and strut back and forth and make a gravelly sound of pride. It was cute. I have yet to see it fly outside of the barn.