Vulture Feast?

You don't have to be in Radford long to notice that there are lots of vultures. In fact, Radford is home to more than 300 turkey and black vultures, the largest roost in Virginia and possibly the entire East Coast. So, it should come as no surprise that Radford holds an annual Vulture Festival to celebrate this oftentimes misunderstood scavenger. Still, Jared was surprised when he looked at our calendar for Saturday where I had written in "Vulture Fest" and he read "Vulture Feast." I had to explain to him that Fest is short for the word Festival and No we were not going to feast on Vultures, just going to learn about them. Three little buzzaaaaaaards, sitting in a tree. Actually, we learned that buzzard is the British name for hawk and Americans just adapted the name to label vultures. The festival was held at the Elementary school and inside we found many fun activities about vultures and other birds.

Clarissa was a little hesitant at first about dissecting owl pellets until I told her it was one of the things that I loved to do as a kid. Then, she jumped right in (that's my girl). She found two whole deer mice skulls and many other tiny bones. Apparently vultures also regurgitate pellets, but theirs aren't as "clean" for sake of a better word.

Amber stuck to a little more familiar territory, coloring.

Krystal is sponge-painting with vulture shaped sponges.

After the crafts and some free popcorn, we went outside to meet Buttercup. Buttercup is a vulture that was rescued from the wild when her wing was damaged by a passing motorist. She weighs about 3 and a half pounds and has a wingspan of over 5 feet.

I waited patiently for my turn to hold Buttercup. Yes, I'm actually talking to her. Up close she had quite a bit of personality and I even told Chris later that she was kind of cute. He added, "In an ugly sort of way."

Vultures weren't the only form of entertainment. The Chickenman showed up and gave the kids quite a show, Jerry Lewis style. Yes, that's a chicken on his head, and No, it wasn't always on straight.

In this photo, "Larry" (all of the Chickenman's helpers were called Larry) helps the Chickenman with his giant Yo-Yo. Jared was pretty sure he wasn't going to have any fun at this festival, it's a good thing he's not enjoying himself :).

And finally..., the crowning event of the day was that I won the Photo Contest with this photograph of a local turkey vulture sitting on our neighbors rooftop last summer. It was a warm August morning when the kids and I looked outside to see this vulture in full glory. We watched it for a while and finally I grabbed my camera and started snapping, never knowing what I would do with this picture, but we wanted to show Chris our mornings nature observations. Little did I know that in February there would be a photo contest of Radford's vultures. When I found out about the contest on Friday I was like, "Hey, I have a picture of a vulture." I promptly e-mailed the photo and informed my family that we were going to the festival to vote for Mommy's photo. I was pleasantly surprised when the director announced that I was the winner and even more surprised when she said that my photo won by a long shot, that meant more people voted for it than just my family. So...I won a T-shirt and the photo is going to be framed and hung in the Radford City Visitor's Center. I guess my quirky habit of loving all of nature's creatures is paying off. Here's to nature's clean-up crew - the vulture!