I caught this guy just as he was taking off from a roof today. When I showed the photo to Nickell he said, "A fi we bald eagle dis!"

Anyone know the proper name/Jamaican name for this bird?

Good photo of a turkey vulture, which is the correct name for this bird. We have them in the states; in fact, Jamaica and the US have many birds in common. Jamaicans may have a local name for it. Might this be what Jamaicans call a John Crow (though my memory is fuzzy on that)?

Some people in this country call this bird a vulture, but that is not its correct name. The bird has a wide wing span - I think six feet. I'm sure if you google the bird's name, you can get the accurate skinny on it. Here, they often reel around high up, wings outstretched, cruising on the air currents.

Hi Rebecca this bird is call a John_Crow.

That's a master shot of our local John Crow.Rebecca you are Number one in my book. You really have some unique way to stir up fund memories of home.

A few things to note :
- they claim not to work on Sunday
- Never let them bake bammy fi yu
- and back in the days boys caught hell when they go to school if John Crow draw brake in their heads.

Ever heard of the headman John Crow ?

That's great Native. I've never heard a few of those including the headman John Crow. Please tell.

Anyone else who have a story or two about the John Crow?

I'd heard about the white John Crow from childhood. It was supposed to get the first pecks of the carrion. I saw this happen near Old Wharf a while back. The bird had the first chance on a dead goat. It's fellows stood back until it was satisfied. Fat, it had to waddle up an incline to take off.

According to the writer here;

http://10000birds.com/headman-john-crow.htm

Headman John Crow is the same as the white. An albino.

"Every John Crow tink him pickney white" a good place to start with our National Psychoanalysis.

BIG UP !!! to you Rebecca !!!
Really enjoy your photos !!!
ONE LOVE !!
Mike

Dis lang time gyal mi neva see yuh,cum mek wi dance an sing (rpt.)
peel head john crow sit up inna tree top,pick out him bald head,mek wi dance an sing gyal,mek wi dance an sing!

Great article Turey. And DEE, I've been singing that song for years and never understood pale head or peel head john crow until now.

Keep the stories coming folks. I love them!

The John Crow is a bird of great symbolic importance. In the Jamaican setting it is associated with ugliness, blackness, evil and disgrace.
In abusive arguments people will call each other names such as "dirty John Crow, black John Crow or heng man John Crow".

The John Crow is also an omen of death. It is believed that if the John Crow perches on a housetop, someone inside will die.

It is also believed that if a John Crow appears in an individual's dream, it signifies death or some other form of destruction in the person's family.

With its ubiquitous swooping presence in the skies above, sniffing for decay to pick at and clean up, its glistening ruby head stabbing away at carrion, it's surprising that John Crow isn't perceived more as a righteous avenger.

The Proverbs endure:
• John Crow seh him a dandy man but same time him hab so-so feather... the John Crow is a symbol of someone who is being very vain and pretentious.
• John Crow a roast plantain fi yuh...depicting someone who is very meager and emaciated who may soon die.
• If yuh fly wid John Crow yuh wi nyam dead meat...expresses the idea that a person is capable of doing the things that are done in the company that he or she keeps.

Go-Local Jamaica Link:
www.golocaljamaica.com/readarticle.php?ArticleID=784

John Crow seh em nuh work pan sunday caa wuk em caa wuk pan sunday......lol

Whoops! On June 12, I said in my message (above) about the turkey vulture: "Some people in this country call this bird a vulture, but that is not its correct name."

I meant to say: Some people in this country call the TV (our short version of its name) a BUZZARD (but that isn't its correct name).

Sorry for the goof.

Nal - it IS a turkey vulture.Family "cathartidae and specifically "cathartes aura". Feeds on carrion. Generally not a highly regarded bird but at least one that does a good garbage service. Check out Field Guide of Birds of the West Indies by James Bond (yes, Ian Fleming used the name for 007!)

Kankro, jankro, carrinkro......these are some of the names we use in patois.Very degrading when someone refers to you as a jankro or one of the above names.

If one land on your zinc roof you swear it a bomb that went off

Great photo Rebecca!!

As I read the comments I got a wonderful idea...lets begin a photo of the day section on this web site? You can take pictures of people, places, things you encounter in you daily walkings. For us living outside of this beautiful community, a picture a day would be good meds for the psyche.

That is a wonderful idea . . . now if I only had the time. But if anyone else wants to do this, again I think it is a wonderful idea.

Uncle Peter: Yes, I know it is a turkey vulture, as I said in my post of June 12. In that same post, I meant to say that some people in this country mistakenly call the bird a buzzard, but that is not its correct name. Around here, we sometimes refer to the birds as TVs (turkey vultures).

Aargh...didn't mean to confuse the issue, but only to clarify what I said in my June 12 post . Capice?

Anyway, YES: TURKEY VULTURE! :-)

Many years ago, I was collecting some aloe vera in the Hellshire Hills. I noticed a few johncrows picking at a couple of aloe plants. The plants had been so used that they had become small trees.

Was it a digestion aid or do they like their bitters intense?

A Native American told me that one of the tribes uses the feathers as part of their ceremonial regalia.

After eating what is usual fare for turkeys, I too would be happy to have a piece of aloe to cleanse my palate!

Jamaican Humour:How the bird got the name John Crow
Many years ago, there was an English man who came to Jamaica. His name was The Rev. John Crow. He liked to go to the bars and have a drink with his Paishiners (Not quite sure of the spelling.

His face was always red and with the long black cloaks he wore, all you saw was his small red face and the long black body.

No disrespect to anyone.

Rebecca...A favourite poet, Lorna Goodison, missing from the recent Calabash Fest, turns her magestic wisdom to things of an aviary nature, sounds that mock and comfort, and Nature's contract with matter & beings.

Here is a poem by Ms Goodison...in all her usual revelatory discoveries:

Coo Coo

Coo coo, fool fool.
Hear what that old man bird with the rusty chestnut belly
and gutteral call rasps at you. He is declaring you fool fool.

From the Parakeet in the garden that Simon Peter heard
to the parson Johncrow with the distinguishing white feather,

the little grass quit and the quit with yellow shoulder
all of them feel they can jump up and dub you, fool fool.

Ringillidae finch, chattering sparrows and grosbeaks,
follow-line birds of dull plumage who nest in cavities

and eat of accumulated insect droppings, continue conference
to discuss what they term your extraordinary appearance.

How you appeared first as ground dove taking low, observing how
the scissor-tail hummingbird cut through gravity and accomplished

flight mastery. Fly backwards or straight ahead and even hover,
winged helicopter, on the same spot when mark time is needed.

They write you off as birdbrain when you were trying to fly
and the killy and hawk and the mockingbirds laughed at you.

Your father himself, wise as pattoo, took you to one side
and whispered, "Do not be overfriendly with the John Crow family."

What made you ignore him and decide to fly with vultures,
chicken-hawks, back-stabbing petchary and carrion-eating company?

Rufoustal flycatcher big Tom fool, his little brother, sad flycatcher
little Tom Fool, want to come and duck their muddy heads.

O cavity dwellers laying heavily spotted eggs (and want to call them
poems). Even they feel that they can call you fool fool.

Once you imitated that Sarah bird and lived in the hills in search
of elevation, frequented forests and made your nest feather-lined

but you lacked the necessary steel gray plumage to be of the tyrant
flycatcher kind. So you dropped down to the plains to regroup.

And dance bird. Ivy Baxter told you that Xamayca is a land older
than most, that it is in fact a pointed finger, a raised shoulder

of Atlantis under the sea, where twenty billion drowned birds
and drowned dreams lie, with lost poets, sing sad coo coo.

You need to know that you are of the species Trochilidae,
and if you live content to be ground dove and come-follow-me

and choose for confidants labba mouth sharp-billed kestrels
and fire hawks, why wonder that your emerald plumage is singed?

So once more, Trochilidae of the family of 319 species, you have
ranged from Alaska to the sheer heights of the Andes

where you fly in the form of wide-winged cousin to condor
and small up yourself over Cuba as Ave, size of a bumblebee.

Bill and tongue, tongue and bill, upcurved, downcurved, slender, slim
sight up your sign, the half moon sickle with the fixed star within.

Bill of sword which will cut through sword of treacherous king.
Bill to gather, such a gathering, of noisome insects self-promoting.

Gather nettles, the turn to draw the sweet honey nectar, gather
nectar and eat insects too, the sweet and the bitter both nourish you.

Dazzle and dazzle them, wear you garments iridescent like flying
precious stones. Aye sapphire, and topaz in flight and emerald lustre

to astonish and illuminate. When they gather to study your vocal
chords in order to imitate your taffeta laugh, make the percussive

click and sound of Om, with the whir-beating of your wings.
Flash and fly when the swarms of wannabees come, it is meet

to lower your body's temperature and draw down into your
necessary reserve, there to go silent till the sun stuns them

with the gold of enlightenment. Who except Farid'du din Attar.
The Rose's essence, can call you to conference and Parliament?

(from Lorna Goodison's Collection Turn Thanks (Part 4: God a Me)

Nice share - THANKS R!

I was in Treasure Beach earlier this year and got definitive captures of 'Headman Jankro'. This can be viewed on my gallery at http://pbase.com/cmarsh

Your comments are welcomed.

Extraordinary Claude! Beautiful photos and what a catch!! Of everyone I have shown this to so far we are all saying it is the first we have seen one.

Thanks so much for sharing.