Turkey Vulture in Jackson County by Miguel Tejada-Flores (Third Place October 2025)
I’m attaching my entry for the October Photo Contest – a juvenile turkey vulture, part of a larger group of migrating turkey vultures, who passed through southern Oregon near the beginning of September. Quite a few of them roosted in and around a stand of tall trees near my old farmhouse, just outside of Talent. I saw this juvenile one morning, sitting atop a snag one morning – and with the telephoto lens on my Olympus camera, was able to frame his head and upper body – the resulting photo, to my surprise, almost looked like an official portrait made by an old-fashioned portrait photography – except it was a real ‘live’ shot of this handsome young bird in the wild! The black & white (monochromatic) version looked slightly more dramatic than the original color version – so it is my entry. Hope you enjoy it!