Grave bird

This turkey vulture at Lake View was not soaring and circling. He was hopping into flight, resting and hopping. Perhaps he was mouse hunting. Ironic thoughts rush to the mind when the eyes see a vulture in graveyard.
Some goofy, third age paganism, will give an absurd, abstract interpretation for a vulture. It is a bird that rips the flesh of the already dead. It is a scavenger. It is nature's consumer of death and rot. When a person is compared to a vulture, he is a remorseless opportunist. It is difficult to be cheery about the sight of this bird. His featherless head allows him to delve into the corpse with little gore to adhere. As a defense he pukes. His digestive slobber adds to the stench.

Fancifully, the bird can be taken as an undertaker's companion. Somewhere there are sketches of a gravedigger holding a shovel, and the bird perched on his shoulder like the parrot on Long John Silver; but that was meant as gruesome humour.
One walking through a graveyard one doesn't usually smell the decay of flesh. On this day, there was a dead buzzard on the ground. Some creature did dig in his carcass [note the disturbed feathers]. Considering that his food is carrion and putrid flesh, it would seem to poison one would not be easy. He could have been shot.