Photo of the Week: Vultures on the prowl!

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I’ve heard and I’ve been told that there are vultures in Altos de Chavón and this week for the first time I actually saw them – and here is the photo to prove it!

As it turns out I have seen and see the vultures in Altos de Chavón on a daily basis – it’s just that I never before realized that they were vultures (despite having been told) – I thought the birds I saw were just big birds, possibly even some kind of bird of prey.

Of course discovering the birds were in fact vultures, meant I wasn’t exactly wrong (they are big birds, they are birds of prey and I hate being wrong) – I was just surprised, vultures are portrayed as being evil and sinister (think The Lion King) and as I’d never seen them prowling around eating the eyes out of any recently slain, animals like cows, lizards, cats or small chihuahuas, I refused to believe that the mysterious birds in Altos de Chavón were vultures!

These vultures really had me fooled – in the 3 years that I have lived here, I had never once seen them ‘sitting down’, or perched and low and behold on my way out of the office on Friday afternoon there they were – resting on the famous ‘Titanic’ look-out.

So there you have it, the story behind this photo, which incidentally I’m rather proud of  – I’m especially fond of that fact that you can see a vulture in flight in the background (which shows how when in flight the vultures do just look like big birds).

P.S Having just done some research on vultures I have discovered that they are in fact not considered as ‘birds of prey’ but rather ‘scavengers’ because they just eat other random dead animals/carcasses, but I don’t like being wrong so don’t argue with me on this!