On a day when I was up early and photographed the sunrise, drove to the Danish community of Solvang, met friends for lunch in Los Olivos, played with the boys, dashed west to photograph a glorious sunset and immediately dashed east to capture the rising moon over the mountain...it begs the question, "Why post a picture of a vulture"?
Answer: because as I scroll through my over-800 photos, I've just posted two favorites as I came to them, one taken at 8:30...this about 10:30... (We'd stopped at the "once-beautiful" recreation area of Lake Cachuma and were told by a ranger that the lake level is down 72%. With little water and long, exposed surfaces where animals might cross for a drink, the prevalence of the many vultures we saw might well be explained.
I'd better just skip ahead through my pictures & scroll to the bottom to check out the rising moon...
@steveh Have you ever seen a cartoon of a desert scene, man crawling and vultures circling? This is a carrion eater, and he's probably doing better in the drought conditions. They're massive birds and I was astounded I could walk near the tree where a couple had landed...
Louise, this is a great capture. There was a vulture colony near one of my former addresses. I was constantly amazed by their beauty - an odd word to describe them but there is really no other.
@voiceprintz "beauty"...I thought the same thing as the HDR revealed the coloration! (I was amazed that with 3 brackets, handheld, he held still enough that the nostril was even clear! I'm thinking that, with a bit of sky manipulation to make it more eerie, this would make a fun Halloween card!
@pyrrhula You've got me thinking about Hitchcock movies now, Ferry! My thoughts on this is that in "The Birds" what made it so scary was that the birds were all the sort people liked and fed...and then the birds turned on people. In the case of a vulture, it comes with a sense of foreboding, so this image outside the Psycho house would have been a good image! (Think of the vulture against this house http://365project.org/Weezilou/365/2014-08-23 See what I mean?!)
Great shot, I've never seen a live vulture. But we have been hearing about the awful drought in parts of the US. Terrible stuff, I know drought far too well.
A lake down 72% is just scary. WOW.
Great capture and beautiful processing on this great bird pic.
When do you return to Lunenburg NS ?