Subject: Early Turkey Vulture, Vancouver BC, Feb 28 1999
Date: Feb 28 19:51:41 1999
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

This afternoon a single TURKEY VULTURE Cathartes aura, the earliest personal
record ever for this species, went over Kitsilano Beach and flew NW over the
outer portion of Burrard Inlet toward West Vancouver during the passage of a
system containing turbulent local cumulonimbus cells.

The average arrival date for this species in Vancouver BC is April 05; given
the great disparity between the date of this sighting and the local
average-- which I remember from my Bird Alert days to be a pretty reliable
average-- I think it likelier to be a bird overwintering further north than
usual than a harbinger of the vulture migration.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net