Buzzards, higher

Three or more flying vultures is called a kettle
A group of vultures hanging out is a committee
Vultures feasting on remains together is called a wake.

When I was a kid, my family had a lake place near the ozarks.  It wasn't techinically the lake of the ozarks, it was off Turkey Creek.  My great-grandfather had built a house on a bluff that had shallow caves.  Just underneath the house next door was the biggest cave, we called it the bird cave.  I had heard about the cave for, it seemed, like a long time before I got to explore it.  I remember asking about going down and I don't know if my cousin didn't want to show me or my mom was freaked out about me walking down to it.  When I finally got to climb down the rusty metal stairs bolted to the cliff, the actual cave was a little lackluster.  It was neat, and i really did think so, but at that age, I had created a different image and the reality of it wasn't as spectacular as I imagined.  There was a bit of a cave inside the cave and there was bird shit everywhere.  There might of been some feathers, but nothing huge, so I don't have anything to show from it..I think there might have been some eggs, but I might be re-imagining that or maybe that was a different visit.  There were absolutely no birds in the cave.  Honestly, thank god.  Maybe that was the reason we didn't go down there much?  I only went in it a few times.  Maybe because it wasn't on our property or that the stair was getting too old, I don't remember.

One time we were driving around in a neighboring "resort" and we saw a committee of vultures on a bare tree in the near distance.  We got out to look and could hear them talking.  The scene was kinda unnerving and haunted.

Anyway the lake place is one of my happy places.  You would see turkey vultures up close flying along the bluff.  We called them buzzards.  It was really cool to see them that close.

Wolves, lower

I'm into vultures now and Eugene Grasset

A vulture on board; bald, red, queer-shaped head, featherless red places here and there on his body, intense great black eyes set in featherless rims of inflamed flesh; dissipated look; a business-like style, a selfish, conscienceless, murderous aspect-the very look of a professional assassin, and yet a bird which does no murder.  What was the use of getting him up in that tragic style for so innocent a trade as his?  For this one isn’t the sort that wars upon the living, his diet is offal—and the more out of date it is the better he likes it.  Nature should give him a suit of rusty black; then he would be all right, for he would look like an undertaker and would harmonize with his business; whereas the way he is now he is horribly out of true.    ---Following the Equator, Mark Twain