HINCKLEY – The birds were a tad tardy March 19 during Hinckley’s annual Buzzard Sunday festival, but the buzzards didn’t disappoint.

The first buzzard was spotted at 11:50 a.m. on the overcast and sometimes rainy day, and the weather didn’t stop thousands of visitors from coming to Hinckley to celebrate the animals on the festival’s 60th anniversary.

“It’s a bad day to be a buzzard,” Cleveland Metroparks naturalist Pam Taylor said at her post near town hall.

She explained buzzards are usually more likely to fly during sunny days when the sun can warm their bodies, adding the first bird spotted on actual Buzzard Day, March 15, wasn’t until 1:16 p.m.

At the elementary school, festivities kicked off with the traditional all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. Hinckley Chamber of Commerce president John Fegan said at 1 p.m. flapjack flippers were facing their final five buckets of batter, meaning they’d already served approximately 1,500 plates of pancakes and “famous” sausage.

Proceeds from breakfast sales are always invested back into the local community, Fegan said. Scholarships; Scout and 4-H groups; and fire department projects are a few ways money is invested.

“We try and give everything back to the community,” Fegan said. “Anybody in this town that is an organization that comes and talks to us, we’re happy to help them.”

Although the chamber is now in charge of Buzzard Sunday, he was quick to credit local police, firefighters and Great Lakes REACT – a volunteer, nonprofit organization which provides community services for events that require communications, traffic control, weather spotting, etc. – for helping the event run smoothly. Also credited were the event’s sponsors, specifically AAA for a large monetary donation and supplying volunteers, and Dairymen’s for donating the milk and juice for breakfast. Other major sponsors include Fosters Tavern of Hinckley, M & T Auto Body, S&S Heating and Cooling & Sheet Metal, Buzzard Cove and Western Reserve Plumbing.

Fegan said he’s never actually had a chance to explore everything Buzzard Sunday has to offer, as he knows he’s best utilized behind the griddle.

“It is funny because I did this for 15 years in the kitchen, and I have not gotten to go enjoy the event in the school for 15-plus years. I can’t get out of the kitchen!” he said.

In the old Hinckley firehouse building, Anetta Piechiwski, a volunteer from the Medina Raptor Center, was showing off the group’s 8-year-old buzzard, Paris. Paris was injured years ago by children throwing rocks, but was found and recovered thanks to help from center workers.

Her recovery was not considered full enough to release her back into the wild, so the center made other plans for her.

“She’s what we call an educational ambassador for her species, because people protect what they know. When they get to meet them up close and personal and learn about them, they’re more apt to protect their environment,” she said.

She explained buzzards are an important part of the environment due to their knack for feeding on carrion, aka decaying meat, so less bacteria remains in the ecosystem. Native Americans call the birds “peace eagles” because they don’t kill, she said.

Near Paris, Medina County Treasurer John Burke dressed in traditional hunting attire and gave the history of the buzzard’s relationship to Hinckley for a crowd. One of the most popular legends about the birds states they were first attracted to the leftover carnage following the Great Hinckley Hunt of 1818, Burke said.

Additional research was uncovered from an old manuscript found in the Sylvester Library of Medina, written by William Coggswell, who as a youth with his uncle, Gibson Gates, were the first white men to set foot in the township in 1810. The manuscript tells of their travels and of finding “vultures in the air” at Big Ben of Rocky River around the foot of the ledges where the Wyandot Indians had hanged a squaw for witchcraft two years earlier. Modern legend says that a 1950s park ranger, Walter Nawalaniec, told reporters he had personally watched the arrival of the buzzards in Hinckley every March 15 and his predecessor, Charlie Willard, had kept a log of their arrival for the past 23 years. All of the buzzard lore soon began to attract newspaper reporters, naturalists, ornithologists and just plain curious visitors.