Double Take

 So...  for the past year I have been driving by this barn, this beautifully-horribly decaying barn that used to be my grandfather's....  and I have seen a HUGE bird of prey perched atop it on many occasions.  Sometimes I am lucky enough to get to watch it take off from the barn roof, wings spanning the dark boards, mounting up to the sky and plummeting down to nab some poor wretched little varmint...  Today on my way home with groceries for our Sunday dinner, I saw this pair... 

 So, I just had to swoop back around the loop and pull off the side of the road and try to get some photographs...  I am fairly sure these birds are scruffier than the usual...  I mean, they have such ruffled feathers...  They look positively miserable sitting there atop that barn...

 I guess they are hawks...  Mom says buzzards...  I dunno...  When they fly, they look like prehistoric pterodactyls...  (bless spellchecker for that one!).....

I am so odd..  I kind of love them...  I mean, you have to give them props for flying up there and surveying the farm and that vantage of the world?  It must be amazing...  but they don't look very civilized for a Missouri Sunday go to meeting kind of Palm Sunday, do they?  Perhaps they are backslider doves of peace....???