Elliott and Tweeters,



Nice photo, but these are quite clearly WILD TURKEYS, not Turkey Vultures.
Where exactly did you see them? There was a report on one of the Seattle TV
news programs about 3 weeks ago about a flock of 9 Wild Turkeys that are
living right in and around La Conner, and had held up traffic and road
maintenance activities on occasion. I was surprised that no one on TWEETERS
commented on it at the time.



Turkeys are spreading so rapidly in Washington-in part, at least through
releases by private citizens-that I expect they will soon be found in nearly
every county in the state. If I am correct, they are already found in almost
every county east of the Cascades (even in Adams County, which has no native
forest other than riparian stands)!



Wayne C. Weber

Delta, BC

contopus at telus.net







From: tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu
[mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of EHO (Elliot
Omiya)
Sent: January-21-08 1:02 PM
To: Tweeters
Subject: [Tweeters] Turkey vultures (acting like snow geese)



I uploaded a
<http://dwfkeq.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pq1RNZ1nFCQgj13JE0QvqSoNHmeJ9gcT4Ackt
bg06hge1ghv6a_MpcrwYPJK2EoDqbj0f4Lw0NOMhkB0Be-yKMQ/TurkeyVulturesSkagitJan20
08.jpg> picture of a group of turkey vultures eating on the ground in
Skagit Flats last Saturday morning. Not only have I never seen turkey
vultures this time of year, I had never seen them on the ground before,
eating out of the field. They seemed quite unconcerned with me sitting in my
car taking pictures, just 25 feet away.



Later I got to see an adult bald eagle flush a couple thousand snow geese
from the game reserve on Fir Island Road. The eagle flew away empty handed
(er, clawed). There were a lot of decoys set up in various fields around
Fir Island Road with hunters, shotguns, and dogs aready. The snow geese are
pretty cagey though, they were all in the game reserve. :-)



A good day in the flats despite the persistent rain (and some snow). I went
up to N. Forks Road early and the eagles are basically gone from the
Nooksack river. Last week we counted 80. This week there were barely 10.
Saw just as many down in the flats as up at the river.