Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Unsteady fliers









I have been writing 600 blog posts about Turkey Vultures. I'm already on blog post number two or three, I don't know. I'm not sure. There's so many it's hard to keep track. But no matter how many it is, when one writes so much about Turkey Vultures one starts to learn things about Turkey Vultures.

I learned that Turkey Vultures are unsteady fliers. I learned it during research.

Isn't that great: 

Unsteady fliers. 

It means when Turkey Vultures float about and glide in all the beautiful and invisible air they are like graceful drunks, slightly inebriated on their diet of fizzing dead meat. Their wings dip and totter unsteadily while their line of flight remains smooth and pretty. Once you hear about it it is unmissable. They glide magically and smooth, but they rock unevenly, light in the wind. They always get there perfectly. It's how they do it. Watching Turkey Vultures all my life the unsteady flying was unmissable in its way all along, but it had no word before. There was no way to see it on its own. "Unsteady flier" lets it stand out for the taking. If you want it.

I want it.

I told my wife about Unsteady Fliers. Because it's interesting. And a day or two later we were walking out in the Minnesota River Valley. The valley was still flooded from the snows and rains of the earlier Spring. We walked back up to the top of the valley. We looked up in the sky to see a couple of Turkey Vultures, riding their invisible tornadoes, as they do.

"Unsteady fliers." We said.

Unsteady fliers. Just like all of us.







No comments:

Post a Comment

If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.

I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!

One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.