Yesterday afternoon, I was blessed to witness one of the surest signs of the end of summer in the Willamette valley.
Here in western Oregon, the most reliable harbinger of spring and clarion of the coming of winter is the arrival and departure of a particular bird...no, not robins. Nor any other cute sweet-voiced songbird.
It's the turkey vulture.
In early spring, their dark, v-shaped silhouettes arrive to repopulate the skies abandoned by wintering raptors after the birds of prey head to their summer hunting grounds in the higher hills.
The buzzards, as we call them, spend the warmer months nesting, soaring, and cleaning up winter- and road-kill here in the valley.
Then, in early October, they gather in groups of several dozen birds, circle higher and higher and higher, until they are mere bird-shaped specks in the stratosphere, and file off in a column heading toward California...Mexico...or whatever parts south they choose to escape the winter months north of the Tropic of Cancer.
As I sat on my newly-built studio deck last evening, I spotted a group of about two dozen buzzards performing their farewell-to-the-valley pirouette, spiraling higher and higher, then sailing off to the south. It conjured up a jumble of emotions...a tinge of sadness that good-byes always seem to bring, a sense of anticipation for my favorite months of the year, a bit of envy that I have neither the freedom nor the equipment to do what they do every year. It occurred to me that while we humans enjoy one of the longer lifespans of the animal kingdom, we are destined to spend those many years mostly tethered to one place on the earth.
Maybe a shorter life wouldn't be so horrible, if sailing thousands of miles to new adventures twice a year was part of the bargain.
