Big, Soaring Birds

     I often see four kinds of big, soaring birds over Lancaster County, Pennsylvania the year around.  The four include turkey vultures, black vultures, red-tailed hawks and bald eagles.  Not only are they adaptable and, therefore, common across most of North America, but large, too, making them easily seen, if one knows when and where to look.  Spotting any of them is exciting, entertaining and inspiring.  Each species has its own way of soaring effortlessly and gracefully, while expending little energy.  And all these species nest here in Lancaster County, and across much of the continent.
      Turkey vultures hold their wings in a shallow V and rock from wing tip to wing tip to maintain balance in the wind, which is also a sure way of identifying this species.  They can soar for hours with scarcely a wing beat.  Adults have naked red heads while younger birds have featherless, gray ones.
     Turkey vultures are scavengers and find dead animals with their eyesight and acute sense of smell.  They raise one or two young annually between boulders, in hollow, fallen logs, and cavities in the bases of standing trees, all in woodlands.
     Black vultures are fairly recent additions to this county's avifauna, since the early 1970's.  They are more common in the Deep South of the United States and in Central America and South America. They have black feathering and naked, dark heads at all ages.  In the air, each black vulture alternately soars, flaps its wings as if in a panic, then sails again on flat wings.  No other bird species in this area flies that way, making that flight pattern the key way of identifying black vultures.  And each of these vultures has a white patch of feathers near the center of each wing.
     Black vultures are also scavengers and they find food by sight and watching the turkey vultures for clues of carcasses.  Black vultures being more aggressive their relatives, muscle in on the turkey vultures at a dead animal.  Black vultures annually hatch a couple of youngsters in much the same places that turkey vultures do.
    Bigger than crows, but smaller than vultures, red-tailed hawks are brown on top, which camouflages them when they perch upright in trees to ambush prey.  But they are white below, with a band of dark streaks across their bellies.  Adults have red-orange tails while young birds have brown ones.  Red-tails sail and circle beautifully on flat wings, that are light underneath, for long periods of time when watching the ground for mice, rats, squirrels and other live prey.
     Red-tails also scavenge dead animals, often competing with vultures for that food.  And this type of hawk annually rears two to four offspring in a stick platform nursery high in trees in fields and older suburban areas.
     But bald eagles are the most magnificent of these local birds in the air.  They have a steady, majestic way of soaring on broad, flat wings.  And the white heads and tails of the adults add to their stately bearing.  Immature bald eagles are big, bulky and dark all over, with random patches of lighter coloring.  Adult and young eagles alike have noticeably large beaks.
     Happily, bald eagles seem to be most everywhere in Lancaster County these days.  I've been seeing them ever more frequently.  There are scores of them wintering at Safe Harbor Dam on the Susquehanna River.  They are along other stretches of that river and large, human-made impoundments.  They commonly winter in farmland, where they scavenge dead chickens and other farm animals.  Late in February and into much of March I see several bald eagles that probably are migrating through this area.  And some of these eagles raise young along the Susquehanna and certain built lakes, and in farmland. 
     Like red-tailed hawks, bald eagles are hunters and scavengers.  They catch live fish, ducks and other critters.  And they scavenge the same creatures, often competing with vultures, crows and red-tails for that food. 
     Watch the skies of Lancaster County, and elsewhere in North America, for these soaring birds.  They are exciting and inspiring to see on the wing, circling high in the sky.