Should you be worried...
 

... if you look up when you are cycling and see buzzards circling overhead? Asking for a friend.

They are purposefully distracting you so you run off the road and break your neck. Obviously they are amateurs.

I tell them hello and say, "I'm not ready yet!"

Cycle Oregon has done hot days in the high desert when we've had vultures overhead. A reminder to ride smart and safe.

It is time to play dead and eat them when they move in on you.

First of all, they are vultures, not buzzards. Nothing to worry about, they will come for you only if you are an odiferous corpse.

BF can be educational.
But this will always be my favorite line from The Outlaw Josey Wales.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...05f473e5be.jpg

Chuck M, I expected a reference to this, but I could not remember which movie it came from. It seems to me there is a similar scene in "Hud" with Paul Newman. "The Outlaw Josey Wales" is classic Clint Eastwood.

Been swooped by Redtail Hawks. Kind of unnerving hearing/sensing the tap of talons on the top of your helmet.
I sometimes wear a yellow helmet so maybe I'm being used for target practice?

I met expectations before 8:00 in the morning. I can slack off the rest of the day.

They are getting to be like pigeons in some areas around me, especially in S. Jersey. I see them circling overhead every day.

A few years ago there was a local news story about a nearby town in Jersey that had been taken over by them. There were dozens of them hanging out in trees and on roofs. Lots of flat, open spaces and roads makes it easy to see carrion.

Too much carrion is why vultures are not allowed to fly on planes. :D

Turkey vultures are very common in these parts. You don't often see them circling though. They're usually already on the ground feasting on road kill. They take to the air in a slow and ungainly manner and I've come close to a few when they take off from their feast as I approach.

To paraphrase what a friend of mine used to say - "You're not riding fast enough"

I and my son would ride thru the burbs in Florida with our Tandem. On trash day thru one area in particular the turkey vultures would land on the roofs of the houses and take turns diving toward the trash cans. Trash was spread over the sidewalk and street. It was a form of entertainment for children waiting for the school bus who had given some names to some of the vultures.

We've got turkey vultures too. And eagles and hawks. If we worried about them then we'd get nothing done outside. We live in the city, but it's very wooded with tree cover. Squirrels are over populated and that's probably one of the things they are after. Both as road kill for the vultures or moving prey for the eagles and hawks.

More worrisome is when you're descending a mountain road and come around a curve to find a group of vultures, feasting on road kill. BTDT.

Vultures are big, and you do not want to run into them at speed. They will scatter, but they are slow. And big.

And as the guy ahead of learned, they will sacrifice one of their own to take down a rider so the rest can eat.

We have lots of raptors in Philly. They hunt mice, rats, squirrels and pigeons. Years ago I noticed this young Cooper’s Hawk chilling on a telephone pole across the street from my house one Sunday morning.


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...7dd15e25b.jpeg

Then there are wild turkeys, which don’t always scatter but can become combative.

This summer there was a faun in the middle of an empty two lane country road with the mom about 50’ away. I stopped to try to shew the faun to the mom. The mom didn’t like that and started rushing me, but luckily stopped about 10’ away as I backed away. Have seen videos of deer raising up on their back legs while trying to stomp people, so knew this could be bad news. The faun rejoined the victorious mom and they trotted off together.

Oh yeah, the wild turkeys can get testy. The ones on Mt. Hamilton refuse to move off the road.

A few years ago, a riding buddy was rolling past a buck on the side of the road in Woodside. The buck charged, hit her in the chest with his head and antlers, broke a couple ribs.

Saw this domesticated wild turkey last Friday. All gobble, no peck.


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...6be696d9a.jpeg

Turkey vulture, turkey buzzard, and black buzzard are accepted common names for Cathartes aura.

Nope. There are no contexts in which mixing buzzards and vultures is acceptable. Buzzards are hunters. Vultures are scavengers. If might be "common" in some region, it is only out of purely regional ignorance (re: Cletus The Slack-Jawed Yokel).

I can see why Ben Franklin wanted this to be the national bird.
Edit: upon further review this is a myth but spectacular nonetheless.