Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Kettle of TVs

Tuesday, October 25, 2005
2 comments
While Julie and I were driving home to Whipple from Columbus on Saturday afternoon, we stopped at a traffic light near Easton and I-270. The women in the car next to us were looking skyward and pointing. Julie followed their gaze and spotted a HUGE kettle of turkey vultures. The weather was clearing after two days of cold and rain, so we figured these birds were kettling prior to migrating southward. It was gorgeous to see. We cheated death to swerve to the shoulder and snap a few images while the birds were low and the light was right. There are at least 114 TVs in this image of the kettle. And there was a slightly smaller kettle to the north of this one!
While a few TVs spend the winter in our part of southeastern Ohio, most migrate to points south in late fall. We often see our last vulture of the year just after deer season (and all its free vulture meals) ends in early December.

2 comments:

On November 1, 2005 at 2:20 PM Rondeau Ric said...

Bill
I think a VORTEX of VULTURES would work on this one.

On April 18, 2007 at 5:52 PM Anonymous said...

I was recently in Southern Costa Rica, Caribbean side. Every afternoon we saw hordes of kettling birds, coming from all sides, starting low and eventually rising, as a group, beyond our eyesight. There were thousands, small and large - I had never heard of this behavior, and it was a sight to see. M. Tajc


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