The Moon, Earth, & Sun... and vultures

Last fall, I had two very magical encounters with vultures, and I am sharing them now in honor of this year's Arivaca Vulture Festival!

On the morning of September 30th, I woke before dawn with the glow of the full moon coming through the windows. Known annually as the Harvest Moon, this one was also a "super moon", and I stepped out onto the patio to gaze upon it as it set over the giant Cottonwood trees.  

Its brightness far out-shined the fading stars and the glow of dawn that was beginning on the east end of the sky. The breeze was crisp and cool, and the smell of fall leaves filled the air.  What an amazing time to be outside, with nothing but nature all around. 

Then I saw that the vultures were out!  Hundreds of them were playing in the night wind, silently gliding, some only 50 feet over my head.  I had never seen such a sight.  On a typical morning, my routine includes getting up around dawn and having plenty of time to drink my morning coffee, watch the songbirds arrive and take a morning dip in the fountains and birdbaths, and then slowly turn my attention to the first vultures beginning to stir in their roosts.  When the sun is high enough to warm the whole tree line, they stretch their wings out to soak up the heat, and then one by one begin to ride the thermals up, up, up, til they are high out of sight.  

To see them soaring in the bright moonlight was startling and captivating and magical.  Turkey Vultures and Black Vultures gliding silently, low and high, back and forth across the moon's path.  As I stood there completely transfixed, my mind started trying to understand how they were staying aloft so easily without the thermal updrafts, and to marvel how close they swooped to one another despite not having very good night vision.  Then I shook my brain out of thinking mode and just watched in awe.

Two weeks later on the morning of October 14th, the annual solar eclipse passed close enough to Arivaca for an 80% coverage of the sun.  At around 8am, I set up my spotting scope and its solar filter on the front lawn, and attached my phone camera to watch the show.  

As soon as the earth's shadow began to cross the path of the sun, a change happened in the garden: all the songbirds that had been in the midst of their typical morning "dip and sip" quieted down and then disappeared into the trees, two Turkey Vultures left their roost and flew to a nearby electrical wire.  I could see the rest of them still up in in the Cottonwoods and Mesquites, not a single one with wings outstretched.

 

 

The two vultures sat on the wire side-by-side, motionless and hunched over, with their backs to the sun.  I had never seen any vulture perch on a wire before, and didn't know that their giant talons would even be able to get a tight grip on something so small.  Yet there they were.  Nature is something else! 

 

 

 

 

As the earth's shadow grew larger, thin, wispy sheets of clouds began to move across it, and the crisp edges of the eclipse became enveloped in an ethereal glow.  The temperature instantly dropped at least 5 degrees and I wished I had socks and shoes on instead of flip flops, but I didn't consider going inside to put them on.   This was a scene I did not want to miss a moment of.

 

 

 

The clouds almost seemed to be pushing on the earth's shadow, as if to fight off the eclipse on behalf of the sun.  But to no avail, as the shadow continued to grow, grow, grow.   Yet each time the clouds lifted, the sun's power returned and the air temperature soared again, only to drop again a minute later.  What a carnival ride!

And then the vultures joined in, leaving their roosts to circle upward through the clouds and across the eclipse. as if playing with both the earth and sun.  Being able to see this incredible scene only through the "round window" of the solar filter made it all seem so stark and surreal.

 

 

 

The sheer curtains of the clouds fluttering against the wind, with the vultures passing through them back and forth, over and over, has now been etched into my mind's eye forever.