Turkey Vulture - Yard Bird # 17

Well, again, not a great photo, but it had to be a vulture today and this was the best of the lot.  Hard shooting against a gray sky, and this is pretty heavily cropped since I did not have the teleconverter on the camera today.  We actually had five of them in the yard today, perched in the trees behind the house.  Later, when hubs went out to get some firewood, he startled one that was sitting right on the patio - oh, what I would have given to see that!!

Although not our prettiest birds, they make up for their appearance by being one of the most graceful birds in the air, gliding great distances on their huge wings.  I like to think of them as nature's janitorial staff, since they feed on dead animal carcasses.  If you'd like a better close up view of a turkey vulture, see this shot on Flickr.  

We also had two Black Vultures pass overhead - my camera settings were all wrong, but I managed to get a couple of interesting (okay, horribly overexposed, if you must know)  images, one of which I'll post in Extra.  They are very similar to Turkey Vultures except for having bluish gray legs and a black head.  

I keep track of my bird sightings on ebird, using their iPhone app and with today's vulture sightings, I have a yard total for this year of 30 species!  Too bad I haven't been able to photograph all of them, but I have 11 more months to work on it.  We've still got fox sparrows in the yard, and after some serious crouching and lurking, I managed to get my best shot yet of one, see HERE
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Thanks for all the lovely comments yesterday.  I am happy to report that my allergies are much better today.  I slept for nearly 2 hours yesterday afternoon and another 9 last night, which I guess I needed.  

Be safe, people.