When Turkey Vultures Go to Dinner
For a week OPB cameraman Nick and I staked out a prime turkey vulture feeding area in the Oregon High Desert. We really wanted the shot for our story about turkey vultures in Oregon. No luck, but we did get a fun story about being stalked, taunted even, by a bird that expert Jim Anderson told us was among the smartest birds in the world. After that story, and after being utterly skunked in our attempt to get video of vultures feeding on a carcass, we believed him. These animals do not like to hang around people and don’t want to be watched while they eat. Fair enough. We did our story even without the feeding segment. Of course, as soon as the story was put to bed, in comes Oregon Field Guide photographer Todd Sonflieth, fresh from his trip to the coast. “Guess what?” he says smartly. “On this tape you’ll find video of a turkey vulture feeding on a seal at the beach!” And he wasn’t even looking for it. Todd was on another story and just happened to be out at the beach when he saw the one thing that eluded Nick and I for a week. So here it is….. vultures eating seal. And now our story is complete.
Thanks Todd!
And thanks Jim Anderson for being incredibly patient and good humored with us as we trekked together all over central Oregon looking for vultures.
October 29th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
The vulture story was most interesting.
The Turkey Vultures do migrate. We often sit in the summer and watch the Turkey Vultures circle our little valley - we actually miss them when they leave for the winter.
A fantastic sight is to watch them settle in the trees for the night - they do this most often early in the spring when they first return and the water is running in the seasonal creek about a block from our house.
They do tend to disappear if we go outside, but we can sit in the living room and watch with the sun setting in the west behind the trees.
We often see up to 8 - 10 circling at any time on clear sunny days.
We do see them eating road kill at times also down on Berlin Rd.
Have you ever considered doing a story about the transplanted wild turkeys? We had a brood this year - I have pictures of the chicks and adults - today the almost grown chicks from last spring were in the yard - there were about 20 in all.
The wild turkeys do damage to gardens - they love to roll in the fresh dust - I am considering putting filbert shells in areas where they do the most damage in the flower beds next spring.
A couple of years ago a friend hunted turkeys on our place and got a 22 pound trophy.
We enjoy Oregon Field Guide - have traveled to many of the spots we have seen in stories - still have a few spots to visit - but we will keep going.
October 30th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
We thoroughly enjoyed the piece on turkey vultures and especially seeing our friend Jim again. He has been involved in several great pieces for Oregon Field Guide and always does such a great enthusiastic job. We just wanted to tell him thanks and it was great to see him after so many years and give him a big hello and thumbs up and thanks to PBS for the show also. We have watched Steve Amen also for many, many years. Great job everyone.