Saturday, May 23, 2026

Day 19.133: Black vultures

Our nature group gathered this morning at Rotary Park in Biddeford and we had a remarkable encounter that turned even stranger in retrospect. 

At one point we saw a group of turkey vultures circling an d then spotted another bird above them. At first we assumed it was another turkey vulture then someone suggested it looked like a much rarer (in Maine) black vulture. It was already flying away. I tried to snap a couple of photos and then it disappeared behind some trees and our attempts to get a different angle failed. 

We decided to backtrack a little way to get a better view of the sky, hoping the bird might circle around for us to get a second look. 

A few moments later, two black vultures flew towards us and right over our heads, heading in the same direction as the first bird. 

The strange thing is, when I looked at my photos from the original birds, they were all of turkey vultures. So either, I I photographed the wrong bird (very possible in the scramble) or we didn’t see a black vulture at all at that point but reacted as if we did and then were rewarded with an excellent view of two of them. Either way, it turned out extremely fortuitously for us. 

Here are a couple of pictures from the undoubted flyby:



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