Remember a couple of weeks ago? I was bitching about Fall taking absolutelyfreakingever to reach South Florida? Like many of you Northerners look for the first Robin of Spring, how I look for the first Vulture of Autumn?

Well, boys and girls, just in time for the #GreatHallowTweet, the Turkey Vultures are back!

First, there was one. Then there were three:

Then there were about a dozen!

As the season progresses, that whole rooftop will be covered in sunning Turkey Vultures. A little unsettling when you think that this is the heart of downtown Miami! And then again, appropriate in a way…

This is what they look like close-up. I could never – nor would I ever – actually want to get this close, thankyouverymuch, but if I’m going to talk about the beasties, you should at least see what they look like. Charming, right? There’s a reason their heads are pretty much devoid of feathers: Being carrion-eaters, they’re able to avoid retaining a bunch of blood and guts and nasty microbes that might later cause disease if it were stuck to feathers. It’s hygenic. Hee!

Courtesy of Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Click on this photo or link and learn more about Turkey Vultures – the unsung clean-up crew of nature!

For more appetizing (in a sense) celebrations of Halloween, travel the #GreatHallowTweet Halloween Blog Hop sidebar, over there to the left, and see how 18 of my best blogger friends are whooping it up! Happy Halloween!

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Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes: Signs of the Season, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!

Michelle is also one of our #GreatHallowTweet participants, so be sure to stop by and say Hi! You might even learn something!

Please don’t hate me because I’m warm. Because I’m not warm. I’m freaking HOT. And not in a good way.

While I realize that many of you didn’t have much of a summer and that you’re probably freezing your keisters off prematurely, we here in Florida have been roasting in 90º heat way past its time.

For weeks now, I’ve been staring at the peaked roof of the County Courthouse, waiting for the arrival of the Turkey Vultures, and therefore, fall. The Turkey Vultures, while seen all over South Florida in the winter, seem to love the thermal air currents around the courthouse. Their arrival is some reassurance that eventually the humidity will drop and the temperatures will moderate. But everyday, I’m disappointed. No vultures. C’mon! It’s October! Where’s Fall?!?

Oh. There it is. The first American Redstart showed up at my birdbaths this week! The American Redstart is a warbler that hawks – or hover-gleans – its food, and is mucho cool to watch as it flits up and through the branches of trees and shrubs to catch insects or nab a berry. This one is either a female or first-year male, and seems to be the first of this year’s winter migrants, at least in my yard. Yay!

And I saw a Turkey Vulture this morning. Just one, but can his buddies be far behind? Fall. Finally.

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Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes: Signs of the Season, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!