Look Alive

by Tom Wilk   
Posted December 21, 2007

Vultures may be regarded as the Rodney Dangerfield of the bird world, but they will get plenty of respect at the East Coast Vulture Festival in Wenonah on March 3, when the Gloucester County borough pays tribute to the scavenging birds with lectures, vulture sightings, music, and poetry.

About five years ago, turkey and black vultures began to nest in Wenonah, staying from December to April. “Vultures play an important role in nature’s ecosystem by cleaning up other animals that die,” says Rich Dilks, chairman of the festival’s organizing committee. The festival aims to dispel misconceptions about vultures. Perceived to be aggressors, the birds are in fact docile creatures that seldom attack healthy people or animals, Dilks says.

Last year’s inaugural festival was a sellout; this year’s event features a roster of new talent, like Jim Six, a South Jersey singer/songwriter who will perform a new song, “Welcome to the Roadkill Café.” Sussex County poet Mary Redus’s “Lessons from a Vulture” is featured on a commemorative T-shirt. “Someone has to do the dirty work,” writes Redus. “Waste not, want not.”

For more information on the festival, call 856-468-6536 or visit eastcoastvulturefestival.org.