[Bristol-Birds] Fw: brooding buzzard


From: Robert Spiegel
To: Wallace Coffey
Sent: April 27, 2009 10:57
Subject: brooding buzzard


I inadvertently scared a black vulture off her nest Sunday in a cave off 
Benhams Rd., Bristol, Virginia Proceeding to a dig point deeper in the cave, I 
noticed two eggs with mottled brown spots lying on the floor about 30 feet from 
the entrance, well within the twilight zone. The only nesting material to speak 
of was a few downy feathers. Forgetting the size of the eggs, which were 
probably twice the size of our Grade A Large, I thought maybe a psychotic 
chicken had laid them and then gone off to commit more craziness. I then 
entered a very tight crawl, pushing a couple of buckets ahead of me. I had 
trouble getting the buckets through at all and when I reached a four-foot drop, 
I simply let them fall and roll. I poked my head out over the drop and saw a 
very agitated vulture, wings spread and standing tall. I beat as rapid a 
retreat as I could. When we emerged, five or six vultures left their roosts 
around the cave sink, one after the other and circled around us. They seemed to 
be keeping a close eye on us and at least one of them appeared to monitor our 
flight back down the hill until we were a quarter mile away. We hadn't noticed 
any vultures on this or any previous trip to this cave. 


--robbie

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