As discussed before, nature has designs so that organisms call fill specific niches. A niche is an animal’s/organism’s specific job/role in nature. An animal and plant are basically water and carbon compounds. If an animal died and nothing would release that carbon, eventually life on earth would end. And dead animals would still be where they took their last breath. We hear so much today about all the carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere with its implications of a gradual warming earth. That is occurring because we are burning the microscopic or fossilized remains of plants and animals in the form of fuel.

Well, scavengers, such as vultures, are doing the same thing. When they feed on a dead animal carcass, their body uses it as fuel to maintain a body temperature and to grow. That process is respiration and is essentially the same thing as when we burn fuel. The fuel provides the energy and releases water and carbon dioxide. Enough of the chemistry lesson.

I know it amazes me, and maybe you also, at the numbers of scavengers that we have in our region. At my former home near the Blue Mountain, it was not unusual for me to see 8 or 10 vultures “kettling” on a spring or summer morning. Obviously, there must be enough carrion to feed them and their offspring. Driving a lightly traveled road you have probably surprised black or turkey vultures feeding on an unfortunate rabbit, opossum or woodchuck that didn’t make it safely across the street. They are one part of nature’s cleanup crew. They not only feed on carrion along the road, but will struggle to drag it off the road between traffic movements. They are the obvious ones because of their size and visibility. Crows also fill that niche and will readily eat carrion, if they get to it before the vultures.

I have also seen bald eagles, especially in winter, feeding on a roadside carcass. If the lakes have an icy covering, finding fish to catch is next to impossible. Just a few weeks ago I chased a red-tailed hawk from a rabbit carcass.

Opossums and skunks are the night shift members of this crew. And, unfortunately, their taste for eating a roadkill puts them in harm’s way, too. I have seen a number of dead skunks and opossums close to the food that they were after.

When I had much younger and normally functioning knees, my dawn jogs on the rural roads were made less tedious by my nature snooping. On mornings after a rainy night, streets would sometimes be “covered” with living and dead earthworms. I quickly noticed how many robins, grackles and starlings would be on the streets with me. They were taking advantage of the buffet before them. The adage: “the early bird gets the worm” was reinforced those mornings.

Maybe we should learn a thing or two from nature. We need to keep all those “niches filled.”

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: A plant-eating animal that specifically eats buds, twigs, bark and leaves is called a(n) _____. A. omnivore, B. browser, C. grazer.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: The tiny, pepperlike snow fleas are correctly called springtails.

Contact Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com.