Subject: [Tweeters] Scrub-Jays and Turkey Vultures
Date: Sun Sep 20 23:47:03 PDT 2020
From: Josh Adams - xjoshx at gmail.com

Hello Tweets,
After over a week of being cooped up inside due to smokey air, I ventured
outside today for a while to try to catch some migration. The best birds of
the day were a group of 4 California Scrub-Jays who stopped briefly at the
top of some nearby trees before continuing on over the Snohomish river
headed east across the valley. Although this species breeds in many spots
Snohomish County nowdays, their preferred habitat seems to be the older
neighborhoods near the downtowns of many of the cities such as Everett,
Marysville, Snohomish and Monroe. As others also noticed today, they seem
to spread out in fall, presumably in search of new food opportunities and
perhaps expanded breeding grounds. This is only the third time I've seen
them at our house, and the first two were a week apart two years ago.

My main target for the day was migrating Turkey Vultures. We're still a
week or so early from peak TUVU migration in my experience, but they will
move anytime the weather creates thermals this time of year in my
experience. In total I had somewhere around 9 Turkey Vultures fly over, but
there could have been some repeats as none of the birds seemed to be in a
hurry to move south.

Monday looks like a prime day for TUVU migration, so if you'd like to add
that species to your yard or patch list it'd be a good time to look. I
generally find them most active from noon until 3pm.

Still waiting on the large flocks of Cackling Geese that typically show up
here around 9/18.

Josh Adams
Cathcart, WA
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