Hiking, vultures highlight New Year’s weekend at Reed Bingham State Park

ADEL — While they’re not on many people’s favorite birds lists, vultures have an important role in nature.

Visitors to Reed Bingham State Park near Adel on Saturday will learn about that role, along with other information about animals at the park, which has one of the state’s most diverse habitats. Officials with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources State Parks Division note that the 1,613-acre park, which has a 375-acre lake, is home to nearly 80 percent of the Coastal Plain’s plant community.

The park has a scavenger hunt for visitors from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., followed by its “Beautiful Buzzards” program, which looks at the animals that inhabit the park. Reed Bingham boasts a diverse animal population that includes gopher tortoises, yellow-bellied slider turtles, indigo snakes, bald eagles, American alligators and, of course, vultures.

“There are turkey vultures and black vultures here,” MiKayla Crews, a naturalist with the state park, said.

The vultures — often mistakenly referred to as buzzards — can be seen at the park at any time, she said. In years past, the park hosted a Buzzard Day in early December to celebrate the “return” of the vultures, which some quipped was the South Georgia equivalent of the annual return of the swallows to Capistrano.

“You can see them pretty regularly, really year ‘round,” Crews said Thursday. “This morning they were out there.”

The primary difference between the two types of vultures are their heads. The turkey vulture’s head is red, while the black vulture has a black head. The black vulture has white patches on the underside of its wing tips, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and often flies with turkey vultures because of its poorer sense of smell. Turkey vultures also have pale feathers on their wings, but not as much as the black vulture.

Outside of their confusion with buzzards — “there aren’t any buzzards that are native to our area,” Crews noted — one of the more misunderstood aspects of vultures revolves around the raptors circling high above.

“When people see them flying like that, they think they are circling some kind of food that they see down below,” she said. “They’re not. If they saw something they wanted, they’d go get it.

“They’re actually riding air thermals.”

By using the thermals, turkey vultures in particular can stay aloft with minimum effort.

“If you look, you’ll notice they’re not flapping their wings when they’re overhead circling like that,” Crews said.

One reason vultures are sometimes looked down upon is people see them eating the dead carcasses of other animals. It’s not unusual to see them take off from a blacktop road where they’ve been feasting on a carcass just as an auto is approaching. But they play an important, if often unappreciated, role in nature. For instance, if an animal dies from an illness, vultures prevent other animals from contracting the sickness.

“They play a huge role in cutting that (sickness) down,” Crews said. “It all goes back to the environment.”

Those who don’t make the program Saturday still can get a peek at the vultures, plants and other wildlife Sunday when the park, along with the rest of Georgia’s state parks, participates in the New Year’s Day First Day Hike program. Park naturalists will lead the hikes from 9 a.m. until 11 a.m., beginning at the park’s trailhead.

Crews said turnout for the First Day Hike is generally pretty good.

“Weather plays a big part in it,” she said, adding that hikers are given commemorative pins and plates for their walking sticks.

Unfortunately for hiking enthusiasts, the weather forecast isn’t encouraging for Sunday. On Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service had the chances of a wet New Year’s Day listed at 70 percent, with the possibility of thundershowers.

Both activities require a $5 day parking pass or an annual park pass.

For more information about this weekend’s events at Reed Bingham State Park, contact the park office at (229) 896-3551 or visit gastateparks.org/ReedBingham.