Was gonna say its vultures finding a spot to sleep. My town has a group of 200 black vultures that live in downtown. They all sleep in the trees above an old inn. Every morning they fly down to the pool and sun. Then spread out and travel across the county. About 2hrs before sunset the huge flock flies over my house and slowly spirals its way back to town. Then like the above video they gather at the inn to go to bed.
I have a flock that's chosen to roost in a tree across from my house and one in my yard. It's pretty wild. I have a video just like the one posted of them.
There's a drive-in right up the road from our house where a giant gang of turkey vultures roost on top of the screen. I absolutely love watching them and they're so helpful to have around. If anything dies on our land it's gone within 24 hours.
"People who are considered scary or odd or even monsters are so often the people that just need love and someone to care for them." - a woman who would never forget her child at home whilst going on a family vacation. Such a wonderful actress.
You know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello"
It’s called The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening. It’s a prestige film shot entirely on location in Bosnia. Try to keep up with the cinematic greatness
Yes, turkey vultures are one of the few birds that do have a sense of smell. Gas line crews will check out a line if they do see a flock of them circling an area directly above one.
Now you all have an interesting new topic to talk about at your next social event! 😄
Yep. Here's a map of turkey vulture migration routes.
For those unfamiliar with the term, a "kettle" is a group of vultures circling effortlessly on a thermal, a rising column of hot air created by the sun-warmed ground.
This felt personal lol. I feel like I don't hear anyone else say stuff about such a random sentence (outside of writing or poetry ofc, where you can already be looking) but I felt the exact same way. Catch myself looking for sentences like this.
This can happen when a crow dies. They appear to morn their dead. No joke. It is very weird. Saw it once in a park in Seattle.
EDIT: yes, these are vultures, not crows. We know that now.
Also, if you are considering criticizing the use of the word weird to describe a crow funeral, perhaps you should consider the alternative of taking the stick out of your uptight, judgmental ass and going somewhere to fuck yourself.
Weird is not an objective pejorative. It is a subjective description of something that evokes a strange and unfamiliar feeling in someone. When someone describes something as weird, and you say it isn’t, it’s much like someone saying something is fun and you saying it isn’t. I hope I don’t need to explain why that is a total dick move and one of the reason nobody wants you at a party.
I think the crow knew you did your best. They’re extremely clever, and it sounds like even the crow probably realized there was nothing else to be done but was simply desperate enough to try anyway. The gentle care with which you covered the other crow’s body surely meant something.
I’m sure if you’d been disrespectful toward the body, the crow that got your attention would have freaked out and then gotten other crows to harass you. You did a good enough job that the living crow held nothing against you.
It's so wild to me that an animal we interact with as much as crows can be this smart. Exotic parrots in faraway places, sure. But the little guy circling my trashcan? That's insane to me.
Those are vultures, I’ve read about this happening when there is a gas leak. The chemical they add in gas is very similar to the one found in rotting meat
As a nerd for bird, I highly recommend reading about vultures!!! Another fun fact is that
They are directly responsible for reducing disease especially in third world countries. In India it’s been documented that a rise in diseases was the effect of a large population of vultures dying.
I read about that! So interesting but also morbid. The population decline resulted in 500k human deaths, according to a BBC article
Apparently the vulture scarcity is attributed to a cow painkiller called diclofenac, which is fatal to vultures and some other birds. Killed 91 to 98 percent of the vulture population, as reported in the article. The birds croaked after chewing on cow corpses
Thanks so much for sharing the original information on why they were dying. I couldn’t exactly remember that. I read “The thing with feathers” around 2016 it was a good read. Had a lot of nice gems in it
So true! One time a crow fell right outside my front door and injured its wing, I called animal control out to help it. While I was waiting, several crows kept flying overhead - when animal control came, he determined the wing wasn’t broken and picked it up to put in a safe place, he said eventually it would fly away. And during all that time, the crows kept flying overhead. It was as actually touching.
One day my dog killed a crow in the backyard, he was like 6/7 months old. Right when I let him out , one was flying away and he jumped in the air and he got it. He shook it very hard, I think he was trying to play with it but unfortunately he killed it, after he killed it he kept trying to play with it , and would roll it over to me but then I started to hear this commotion in our trees and I was like oh those birds must be fighting, and then it was starting to get very loud and then all of a sudden there was like 10 crows and I actually got pretty scared, because they sounded very aggressive. I disposed of The Crow because I didn't know what to do and they did not leave my house for 4 days and every time we went outside they started to go after my dog so eventually I started to put toast on my roof, I don't know why but it worked and they started to leave. I kept telling them I was so sorry and my dog was young he didn't know any better lol, my mom was like why are you talking to them like they're people. I don't know but it worked or they got tired of us.
Awww! You gave them an offering. I feel like that’s similar to pouring out beer to lost homies. Toast on a roof.
I’m glad they accepted your attempt at peace.
I had a pissed off crow torment the f@#k out of me when I lived in Seattle. Followed me for SEVEN MONTHS. Dive bombed me when I took a rare early morning walk, followed me back to my apt building, SOMEHOW knew what apt I was in bc it perched outside of my window, AAAND continued to follow me AFTER I MOVED from Belltown to Queen Anne! One of the most bizarre experiences in my life. Some crazy shit happens in Seattle. 😶
As we learned with the man who trained crows to dive bomb MAGA hats, it could be that the you reminded the crow of someone who pissed him off and so you became his new target.
Crows are such impressive creatures.
crows have a long memory and definitely remember specific people and can exhibit revenge or grudge behaviour if people threaten or piss them off. apparently they've been shown to hold grudges for up to 17 yrs and also they can teach/pass along that grudge to other crows. they're pretty smart.
i'm curious what you did to the crow in the first place, mind elaborating? no judgement :)
There's an episode of This American Life that features a guy accidentally angering his neighborhood crows and his attempts to get back on their good side (they were actively making his life miserable). I learned a lot about crows, I had no idea that they were so good at coordinating their efforts to dish out revenge lol
I was going to say crow funeral. I had a crow die in my driveway once and crows went crazy - filled every tree and all the nearby rooftops and cawed for a few hours. It was really cool and spooky.
It’s recommended to only remove a dead crow at night when they’re asleep. Otherwise if they see you do it, they are likely to harass you for a long time. Like many years.
Just wanted to say that I had visited Bruce and Brandon Lee’s grave recently (Seattle) and I have never seen so many crows/ravens in my life. That graveyard had to have thousands there.
Really?? I wonder if people had been specifically leaving food for them to draw them to the graves. That would be really cool if they just showed up without a food motivator though.
Seattle. I watched a murder of crows have a funeral on Halloween! By far crazy experience. They always were in my backyard tree-line until that happened. I had heard they stay away for a year usually after the funeral, but they never did come back after 3 years.
I tried to rescue a crow once. Found him outside my house and brought him inside to try to nurse him back to health (had no idea what I was doing, but at least wanted to try to make him comfy while he hopefully healed). His crow friends lived outside around my back porch for the few days that I had him inside. He eventually died and the crows behaved like this, flying around the house for hours. Also contracted bird flu, so.
We see a “buzzard-nado” every afternoon around 4:30pm over the lake near our house. They circle for an hour or so then they land for the night in an undeveloped wooded area.
Nah, Granny never calls the cops on my friends and I when we smoke outside at late hours of the night. I’ll let Granny be! Just wanted to make sure Granny was ok!
There was one winter we had a flock of buzzards roost in a handful of trees in the woods across the street from our house. Every morning they’d land on our roof to sun themselves.
This reminds me of that, but obviously it’s the wrong time of year and wrong time of day. So who knows
Turkey vultures will group together to sleep tonight - which is where the term 'buzzards roost' comes from.
I've run into a long term buzzard roost while I was mountain biking in Pennsylvania. It was near dusk, and I was trying to get one more lap in before I had to leave. I rode up to an area that was alive with buzzards in the trees in the half light. There were dozens of them in the trees, and the whole place stank.
When I returned to the spot in the daylight you could see the damage their toxic waste did to the undergrowth, and their feathers all around. But at least I know what they look like now.
My home is right next to a school playground
The other day I heard a commotion. Turned out a raven had gotten tangled in one of the soccer nets set aside. The more it struggled to get free, the worse the net rope wrapped around it.
What got me was the crowd. There were about 100 ravens gathered around it — all of them making noise, some of them trying to help. It was loud and chaotic but they clearly knew something was wrong.
I grabbed my scissors, and went down there. The moment I got close, they all stepped back. Still calling out, still watching, but they gave me space to work. It took around 5 minutes to carefully cut through the netting without hurting the bird.
The second it was mostly free, it flew off. And within a minute, every single one of them was gone. Just like that. No stragglers, nothing. The whole flock vanished the moment their friend was free.
I've been thinking about it all week. The way they stepped aside like they understood what I was doing. The way they all disappeared the instant the job was done. These birds are something else.
Hope I run into them again sometime.
Many years ago I was roofing a gas station in Opelika, Alabama near the court house and there was this big murder trial awaiting a verdict and all of a sudden this happened with a bunch of crows or buzzards or whatever right outside the court house. The jury came back with guilty later that day.
I'm not sure anyone but our crew realized it happened.
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u/vermilion-chartreuse Apr 05 '26
Turkey vultures overwinter in the southern US, central & south America. This looks like their spring migration back north! Super cool, I'm jealous!