More signs of Fall
As summer wanes, I begin looking for Nature’s indications fall is arriving. One of the early signs is the migration of the buzzards. Seeing these big “garbage men of the sky” as they gather for their journey south is impressive and always interesting.
During the summer months, the buzzards live in the various parts of the hills, seldom in groups larger than three or four in once place.
When a dead animal is found, the word goes out, and a few birds come from other nearby areas. In my youth when I was working on the ranch and out in the foothills on a regular basis, I seldom saw more than five or six birds working on one animal. They seem to know it is fruitless to get too many birds in one spot.
As fall approaches, something urges the buzzards to send out a call to gather up in one spot in preparation for their migration flight south into Mexico and even South America. In fact, in places where the birds winter, as many as ten thousand are often spotted.
The big eucalyptus trees near the Barn Theater becomes a gathering spot for soon-to-be-traveling buzzards every fall. We also see them in the river bottoms and out toward PDC roosting in tall trees with bare limbs.
Monday this week I was at a business along Plano. Looking up, I discovered a flock of at least twenty or thirty buzzards circling and coasting away a few yards, only to circle up again. They seem to want to “practice” their migrating behavior. They will repeat their flights around the area until something triggers the “time-to-go” signal.
Sometimes there is nothing obvious that sends the buzzards south. Other times an early rain, or a frosty night, encourages them to depart. One morning we watch flocks of large black birds flying around the area. The next morning not one bird is seen.
Researchers tell us buzzards don’t migrate on cool, overcast days. In fact, they may not be able to fly the required long distances because the bubbles of warm rising air don’t form unless the sun is shining. By using rising air the buzzards seldom flap a wing, but simply circle on their outstretched wings until they fly off the top. Then they strike out in the direction they wish to go in a long straight line. When the first bird finds another rising bubble, they quickly fly in a circle around the inside, rising up until the lift runs out, then repeating the process.
On a bright spring day many years ago, I was riding along the top of one of the ridges east of Strathmore. I spied a circle of buzzards several hundred feet tall. The top of the circling stack flew off in a line to the north. Following that string of birds I discovered another stack a mile or less to the north. When I looked south, I discovered at least five or six more circling stacks, each several hundred feet tall.
It was impossible to count the number of birds, but a quick estimate revealed there could easily be five or six hundred birds in each stack, and another two or three hundred flying between the circling groups. This was a huge migration to the north.
Last week I talked about the hummingbirds and their feeders. Up until the wind blew so hard, I had a group of hummers estimated to be near one hundred birds or more. In past years the tiny birds’ daily use of my feeders peaked somewhere in the month of August, continuing at a very high level of activity until mid-to-late September.
After the heavy wind last week I was a surprised to see the number of birds had suddenly declined. I wondered if the wind literally blew the birds out into the valley.
A friend of mine, who also has hummingbird feeders on his front porch, said he too noticed a sudden reduction in the number of birds. When he read my column last week, he called me. He’d been out of town and wasn’t aware of the winds. He laughed, “The wind didn’t blow them down to my place. My numbers are sharply down also. Now I know why.”
We talked it over, and came to the conclusion our birds made a snap decision to migrate. It was already well into the middle of September, so their urge to pack up and head for Mexico was probably nudging them every day. When the hard wind came up, it may have represented an impending winter storm to them. With no further urging, one might presume there was a rapid packing of tiny suitcases, followed by an equally fast exodus from the foothills.
Since neither of us have had any return of bigger numbers of birds, we’ve probably seen the “hummingbird indicator” of impending fall. And the gathering of the buzzards around the Barn Theater is an undeniable indicator winter is just around the corner. Now when is it going to rain? Anybody seen a tarantula walking yet?