Buzzards and Their Significance

2GreenEnergy “headquarters” is in a rural part of Santa Barbara County, about 30 miles inland from the city itself, which is located on California’s central coast.

Insofar as this area is sparsely populated, we have what one might expect in terms of domesticated cows, horses, sheep, pigs, and, of course, family pets.  Living among us are the abundant squirrels, gophers and rabbits, which function as snack food for the birds of prey like owls and hawks.  Surrounding all this is a considerable wild animal ecosystem: rattlesnakes, coyotes, raccoons, mountain lions, bobcats, deer, foxes, and an occasional bear. 

After all the carnage associated with the dining habits of carnivores, in comes the clean-up team: buzzards, which we see occasionally circling the skies, signifying an imminent death of something tasty and nourishing.

I bring this up solely to tell you this: recently the buzzard population has multiplied by at least an order of magnitude. What used to be a rare appearance of perhaps a dozen, and only for a short period of time before and immediately after a death, now are many hundreds, and they’re around us all day, every day.  My wife took the shot above us just a few hundred yards from our house earlier today.

Makes one wonder: Are buzzards circling the White House too?