Turkey Vultures

Finally! A bird I've been trying to get for a while, and one of the few birds I've gone out specifically to try to get, I finally got.

The Turkey Vulture!  Isn't he majestic!  Ugly as sin, sure, but majestic, too.

I see them everywhere: over the park, along the river, on my way to and home from work.  They soar so high, though, I was getting resigned to never getting any pictures much better than this.  But I had hopes.  I knew there was one family group that roosted together every fall near the 405-22 connector.  I found that's a hard place to get pictures, though, what with all the freeway traffic.  A couple of trips over there were not fruitful.

But I knew there was another very large flock that lived over near where I worked, at the old Tustin Marine Base and blimp hangars.  Every fall, the base is home to dozens upon dozens of vultures.  They perch on top of the blimp hangars and soar high over the decommissioned base.  At any given time starting in late August, you'll see large groups of vultures spiraling through the air.  Hundreds of them.  I thought that might be a good spot.

So today I took my camera (and big lens) to work with me.  At lunch, I drove over by the base, and there they were, perched close enough to get pictures, right on some houses!

I drove into a residential neighborhood, and a couple of houses had small groups of vultures perched on the roofs.  What a cool thing, as Halloween approaches, to have such eerie birds looming on your house.

I parked right in front, and was able to get some pretty good pictures, for a gloomy, overcast day.

I was able to get them close enough (thank you big lens!) to see the white on their legs.  As if the grotesque bald red head and carrion-eating weren't bad enough, vultures urinate on their legs, giving them a ghostly white pallor, to keep cool and disinfect them.  They also projectile vomit when nervous, which, apparently is a lot.  (Slate.com writer Constance Casey, in a series on revolting creatures, did a really excellent piece on vultures that'll make you think of them as almost cuddly.)

Maybe I'll be able to get more on a brighter day, to get some better pictures, but I'm not sure.  I think the only reason they weren't all off soaring high above the base was because it was gloomy and sprinkling.  I am just thrilled to have gotten these pictures, though.  Aren't these birds awesome?

Turkey Vultures, October 5, 2010, taken with the Nikon and Sigma 150-500 lens, at the Tustin Marine Base.