It’s time to look back on 2021! Check our blog between Christmas and New Year’s for a variety of stories and memories of 2021 from the staff and volunteers of the Wildlife Center of Virginia.
Let me preface this with the fact that I have an exceptionally poor memory, and so there may be things that happened in the year since I started here that were, at the time they happened, much more exciting to me than this memory. However, I cannot remember those things. What I can remember is having the relatively recent opportunity to release the six juvenile Black Vultures that our rehab team had raised here at the WCV. While I am generally partial to Turkey Vultures, I do love both local species of vultures we have here, and since I moved to Staunton last year I have found great joy in observing the massive numbers of them that like to hang out on thermals above the city. And on the cell tower at the top of my street. And over the bear yards at work. Really, this area is a vulture lover’s dream for observing them in the wild, even if you don’t get to see them up close and personal at work.
Although I was not involved in the vultures’ care and raising for much of their lives, I did get glimpses of them throughout their time here, from adorably fluffy little nestlings to full-grown juvenile menaces in our outdoor flight pens. And in those brief moments, they had as much personality as I have come to expect from vultures. So when it came time to kick them out of the nest, I happily volunteered for the opportunity to do so. I looked up areas where multiple vultures had been spotted within an appropriate region to release them, loaded them all up into crates, and then took them home with me after work. To be released, of course.
However, the quick, majestic take-off that I had anticipated (and might have gotten from an older, wilder vulture) was not what I got. Instead what I got was 30-40 minutes of babies who had never seen grass or trees meandering through the grass and trees, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. In all my attempts to get them to fly away, I ended up with very dirty shoes and multiple vultures on my car, in the murky gray of a cloudy late afternoon. But over the course of two separate releases on a weekend in early October, I also got the special privilege of witnessing those former cotton balls take their first steps into the world at large. And now when I drive through Staunton and look up to see dozens upon dozens of vultures circling on high, I imagine our baby vultures up there with them, probably still menacing the adults in their lives.
— Ace Eid, Licensed Veterinary Technician