Dale Bond, a 90-year-old long-time Independence Township resident, has a fondness for large birds, even vultures.
“While vultures have a bad reputation, and certainly aren’t as cute and friendly as songbirds, they provide an essential service as nature’s dependable consumers of wildlife that have completed their own personal life cycles,” said Bill Haney, fellow author and local historian. “As with all scavengers, this would be a less clean and aromatic world without them.”
Bond is sheltering a pair of juvenile turkey vultures that hatched and were raised in one of his barns, one of the oldest barns in the Clarkston area.
He also has red-tailed hawks nesting on his land and has kept peacocks for many years.