What do New Year’s buzzards and yearnings have in common?

Wonder!

No, I do not start 2022 stained in the head.

I turn to the advice of Rachel Carson, the American biologist and environmentalist who told us, “The more we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less we will taste for destruction.

Please join me in my search for wonder. We can all use giant doses of it as we continue to face overloads of COVID cuts and political partisanship.

So why nozzles?

I had a visit.

Two weeks ago, dozens and dozens of people perched in the trees surrounding my property, a phenomenon I had never witnessed. It was twilight, I was filling the squirrel-proof feeder, turned my head too quickly, and hit her on the metal feeder. “Ouch,” I shouted.

Off flew about 30 scared buzzards. Even more remained in the trees, mainly very large oaks. My house is surrounded by woods and since most of the leaves have shed, I was able to do a binocular count. I stopped at 100 when it got too dark to see. Many were still there in the morning, spreading their wings in the rising sun to dry. I watched in wonder.

On and off for a month, I had nightly visits, but no repeat of the 100 visit. I pulled out bird books and scoured the internet to learn more about the strange creatures that adorn this small, wooded hill.

Simply put, buzzards are amazing birds. They have a bad case of The Uglies, but everything else about their presence on Earth is fascinating, once you look past their undeserved bad reputation.

Indeed, the nozzle’s ability to hover over rising air columns is wonderful to see. It makes me want to grow wings and soar thermals too.

Their incredible sniffer is the envy of perfumers. Their eyesight is eight times better than ours. Their social ability to come together and get along is something we humans should aspire to. Their strange way of stopping the spread of the disease is admirable. They are monogamous, mate for life, and are family oriented. Their calm is appreciated in this age of angry talking heads.

Just as Alfred Hitchcock destroyed the love of full-sized birds for many who watched his horror thriller, “The Birds,” other films mistakenly have buzzards circling injured humans and dying animals for indicate that they are gone. In reality, buzzards cannot detect when an animal is dying.

Their olfactory system, however, is so good that some species can smell carrion (i.e. rotting flesh) from miles away. Once they locate a carcass by smell, sight or sound of other birds or prey, they quickly approach to claim their share. Did you know that America’s majestic national symbol, the bald eagle, also eats carrion?

Think of it this way: Buzzards help save the environment and stop the spread of disease among animals, including us. Before explaining this point, let’s first take a look at Buzzard vs Vulture.

By scientific classification, my tree visitors are really vultures. My two favorite stomping grounds, the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the Virginia Piedmont, have the same vulture populations with two common species, the Black Vulture and the Turkey Vulture.

This doesn’t change the fact that Americans more commonly call buzzard vultures. Blame this confusion on the early settlers of New England who watched American vultures soar and gave them the colloquial name of the “hawk” they had brought back from Europe.

Almost everyone everywhere recognizes that these large, bald, long-necked scavengers are vultures, but we Americans appreciate our linguistic idiosyncrasies, good or bad.

It helps to understand the confusion of names if you know the history of the Old World and the New World. It was the Old World settlers in our New World country who first misidentified vultures as buzzards.

In the world, there are 23 species of vultures and 26 species of buzzards, all considered to be raptors.

True hawks are a type of Old World hawk from the genus Buteos. A “red-tailed hawk” here, for example, would probably be a “red-tailed hawk” in Old World Europe. Another difference is that true buzzards prefer to search for their own living prey, while true vultures prefer dead objects. An exception is the black vulture which can prepare an occasional meal from a live skunk or rodent.

The best summary I found for this pun comes from a recently updated article in The Spruce:

Ultimately whether a bird is a hawk or a vulture depends on who you ask and where you ask them. In North America, a vulture is a vulture, a buzzard is also a vulture, and a hawk is a falcon.

Unlike hawks which have a distinctive kee-eeeee-arr call, the American buzzard vulture is silent because it does not have a voice box. An occasional growl is about it.

When so many people were in the trees nearby, the only sound I heard was wings that could extend for 5 feet. I watched in amazement at three or more of these tall guys perched side by side on seemingly thin branches, sometimes changing the order of the seats as others came to a particular tree. Most nights I get around 15 to 40, but no repeat of The 100 Flood.

With the hunting season and the deer and others killed on the road at the top, I suspect there is plenty of carrion for them, at least here in the foothills of Virginia. They are rarely seen on the beaches of the coast, but inland, in the pine forests, they are numerous. I just spoke with a rural friend in Jackson County who told me buzzards keep his neighborhood free from carrion.

In doing so, wherever they live, these birds perform janitorial duties that no human wants – cleaning up the dead. Nozzles have stomach acids and enzymes so powerful that anthrax, botulism, rabies, and other dangerous diseases and microorganisms are destroyed by their digestive systems, preventing spread to other animals and humans. It’s a good thing for us.

The mighty bills make up for their weak legs and feet, but they still can’t get their dinner. Instead, they work in tandem with their own species or other carrion eaters such as coyotes and eagles.

The heads and necks of harriers are mostly featherless, so when they feed on rotten meat, bacteria and parasites cannot burrow into their feathers and make them sick. According to bird experts, this allows them to stay healthy while also feeding on material that could make other animals sick.

Do you now find wonder in such a finely tuned animal that is the living descendant of dinosaurs? Think of them as natural rubbish bins that save us from work and potential health problems.

But I’m definitely not interested in seeing them feast on dead stuff. Yuck.

Buzzards, however, are welcome for roosting in nearby trees at night, far enough from the house not to be disturbed. In my observation, they seem less tolerant of me. The other night when I pulled the hose out to wash the car, the 20 have already settled in as the darkening sky took off and did not return.

Did you know that a group of our buzzard vultures is called a committee, a place or a volt? A flock in flight is a kettle. When they gather in a feeding area to share dinner, it is called a vigil.

For 2022, may the buzzards bring their kettle and have plenty of committee places in my trees nearby, but keep their wake to themselves. If and when they leave, I’ll find something else to satisfy my wonder quotient.

Hope you find your own dose of wonder to balance whatever 2022 brings. You don’t have to climb the proverbial Mount Everest to marvel. Just pay attention to the little things already present in the worlds around us.

Kat Bergeron, a veteran journalist and editor specializing in the history and sense of belonging to the Gulf Coast, is retired from the Sun Herald. She chronicles the Mississippi Coast Chronicles as a freelance correspondent. Contact her at [email protected] or at Southern Possum Tales, PO Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923.