My father always had the idea that everything you really need will eventually come around. Okay, really that applied to shopping in a mall with my mother. She’d wander off looking for things and when the time came to find her, he would not go looking for her. He would just find a spot and sit down on a bench and wait. Before too long, she would walk by. It always amazed me that it seemed to work so well, but it did.
I am starting to become a believer in that as a life philosophy. All because of a bird.
It’s no secret that I have been hoping to catch sight of a turkey vulture for some time. A couple years at least. I knew they were around, but I had never seen one. Others I knew would catch a glimpse now and then, but we never seemed to cross paths.
There was a close call about a year and a half ago. I heard some really horrible squawking coming from a clearing ahead of me, but by the time I got there, whatever it was had flown off. After checking online, I was pretty sure that I had heard a turkey vulture.
Last night, my wife was driving my daughter to the store, when the phone rang. It was my daughter, saying that her mother was all excited about seeing some bird and I should go outside and look up, because it was headed in my general direction. They were pretty sure it was a turkey vulture.
So I grabbed binoculars and ran outside. I didn’t really need the binoculars. By the time I got out, it was pretty much right above my head. And fairly low, so it was easy to see. At first glance, you could mistake it for an eagle, but the wings were a little different shape. I still was unsure it was a turkey vulture.
Since I couldn’t get a real good look I couldn’t clearly see a red head, so I was thinking it might be a black vulture. But after checking wing colouring and shape and a couple different bird books, I decided it was, indeed, a turkey vulture.
I was beginning to think it would never happen. And I didn’t have to go searching. I just had to look up.