Interestingly enough, in one instance it didn’t even involve the immediate need for road kill. We had a local Cathartes aura that kind of disproved the theory of turkey vultures as being shy. I thought I made a fantastic discovery as one gracefully glided across the street entry, like a living, breathing C-130, to the area where I live.

He perched himself on a neighbor’s birch tree limb, and started preening. I parked my car, grabbed my camera, and started shooting photos. The neighbor came out of her house probably wondering if I was potential cop material planning to commit a 602 PC.

“Look!” I said. “You have a turkey vulture in your tree.” “Oh, yeah,” responded the neighbor. “This has been his favorite spot for about six months. He flies around the hillside and then returns.”

(Not that this has become a sore subject, and I don’t harbor ill will, but what would have been *polite* would have been for my dear neighbor to have acted surprised, astonished – and share in my discovery … my first ever, up close and personal, episode involving a turkey vulture. So I went home … and opened my mail … and started dinner … and …).

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned with my encounter involving a turkey vulture – “ugly” is in the eye of the beholder. He has (almost) obliterated my human misperception that “if it ain’t cute, it ain’t worth it.”