Our young two-lakes hawk landed on a limb in the tallest tree on the South lake which is a bare Bald Cypress. Bare because all the leaves, if you can call them that, have fallen leaving just the bare limbs the main trunk straight as an arrow pointing up to the sky. It’s Winter time here. It is a tiny limb that sticks up the highest that I have also seen the Great White Heron land on and gangly try to balance itself there. I ran to get my Canon 40D to take some pictures as I always do. Two Lakes, I’ll call him, stayed there for just a couple minutes when five Black Vultures (I call them Texas Buzzards) came flying into view so effortlessly. He flew North and circled around the West end of the Northern lake. Did this a couple times and then started soaring higher and higher in tight circles. He must have caught some good thermals rising from the ground. 

I had learned about thermals when I came to Texas and worked at Exxon where I met a fellow who flew model gliders. He lived close to me on the outskirts of town where there were plenty of fields to launch and fly a glider from. He invited me to come out one day and fly his glider with him. I did and he taught me how to notice and detect when the glider has come in contact with a thermal noticing a jerk in the wing of the glider and the movement of the glider. Heated parts of the ground give rise to these thermals as hot air escapes from the cooler surface near the ground. They ascend in vertical rivers of air where light things, like plastic bags and birds can be lifted into the sky quite easily. Buzzards and hawks use these thermals to soar over the land and search for their prey. Two Oakes lifted almost pure vertically until he was several hundred feet above the activity going on below.