Wow, how lucky you were to see this magnificent bird!

The pictures are fabulous...

I love how the sunlight highlights the wing tips.

Stupendous!

They fly over us rather often. I love to watch them soaring on the wind.

I love the work they do to clean up the roads!!

When I was a kid, one didn't take off from road kill soon enough and impaled my Dad's windshield. The bird was killed and his windshield was destroyed - a hold about 2" across and cracks radiating out from the hole.

Dad was 200 miles from home so he continued to drive. About halfway home, a highway trooper pulled him over to ask about the windshield. Dad had thrown the carcass off on the side of the road, but there were feathers stuck in some of the cracks so the trooper let him continue down the road.

I'm always very cautious when I seen the vultures on the road. A few weeks ago I came over a hill and there was a group of black vultures working on some road kill. I think they must have been nest mates - they were all smaller than usual and stuck really close together. When I drove home the same way, they were still on the side of the road, hoping to get more off the same road kill.

Last week my husband and I saw a group of black vultures near that spot on the road - we think it must be the same group since black vultures are not as common as turkey vultures.

One of my favorite birds, and I have never had this close of an experience with them. Majestic looking up on that chimney.

I was driving and saw a kettle circling in to land in a little meadow and happened to have my camera with me so I parked and walked down to where they had landed and got these shots.

I had no idea how much brown they have in their feathers. I thought they were as black as crows.

thanks for these…

The way you've framed him reminds me of an ancient Roman imperial standard.

Don't you just love it when birds hold still long enough for you to take such great pictures!

We see them all the time, but for the first time this year we had our own family nearby that often flies over the property.

This behavior reminds me of butterflies which cannot fly if the sun isn't shining - they need the sun to warm the fluids in their wings so that they can fly.

Perhaps something similar is going on here. If they warm their wings up in the morning perhaps it's easier to fly. I'll have to go look that up ....

They do it to dry off the dew that settles on their feathers overnight so that they will be lighter in flight and also for thermoregulation as they maintain a lower body temp at night. They also do it to kill the bacteria they pick up from the carrion they feed on.

If you get a chance to follow them to their roost when they come in at dusk, do it! It's quite a spectacle to see them circling in and landing in the trees.