Locally the big ironic thing on March 15 every year is to go out into Metroparks, a green band that loops around Cleveland, and welcome the return of a buzzard population to Hinckley. But, in what came to be known as the Forgotten Triangle, another committee of buzzards has found a home.
In the Triangle, for a long time, there were far more abandoned homes than ones that were occupied here, then, eventually, you were lucky to find even an abandoned home. All the abundant industry had left years ago, and the factory buildings are mostly demolished. Everything in the Triangle has gone that way since the seventies, and become a huge swath of city returned to nature, albeit polluted as hell.
Fond of the many abandoned chimneys ad smokestacks of the Triangle, and with the abundant flora and fauna that was returning, the buzzards, returned to their roots, and thrived, and, the view, stretching all the way downtown, is, also, apparently to the buzzards liking.
The buzzard became a regional symbol here, largely due to a once extremely popular radio station, WMMS, that also helped drag in the Rock Hall to Cleveland. But it’s a misnomer, similar to the original misspelling of the city’s namesake founder, Moses Cleaveland. The buzzards are actually vultures – turkey vultures. But it’s the social lives of the birds and their own characteristics that might be the basis for their allure by certain locals.
Vultures and buzzards have featherless heads, but vultures are distinct from buzzards since they are very social. Their flying groups, like vultures, is a kettle, but, while on the ground or perched, their social nature, has labeled them a committee, venue or volt. A wake is when they come together to feed on a carcass.
Also vultures do not chirp, sing or scream but they do hiss and vomit their corrosive stomach juices at a threat. They also practice urohydrosis – peeing on their legs and feet for cooling – and the heraldic pose. Vultures need to warm themselves every morning, so they will perch on a tall structure to spread open their wings and warm themselves with the sun.
The vulture committees of Ohio love the city of Cleveland. It’s a fitting home. Venturing to Hinckley is actually unnecessary because the vultures turn up all over the place in the city -hissing, pissing or sunning themselves in one of their venues or enjoying the dead meat of a city in one of their wakes, or constantly circling overhead in search of a meal of dead meat.